ļ»æRajiv, we are so honored to have you here today on the Resilient Entrepreneurs podcast. Thank you for joining Vicki and I. We are really looking forward to having a nice, deep, interesting conversation on AI and technology and business and entrepreneurship and all those great things in your story. So first of all, thank you and welcome.
It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me. And, you know, I'm so excited to be here and I hope your audience gets good take-home value after they get done listening to the podcast.
Hmm, I am certain of that. So I love to start this podcast with a bit of a backstory because it's always interesting one's childhood experiences and how that leads to the person they are today. So give us a little bit of your early days story.
Yeah, you know, I was born and raised in Los Angeles. I was born in LA. I did my undergrad in LA. I did my Master's at USC in LA. So, you know, so I'm a Southern California boy born and bred.
But you know, my dad came here from India when he was 18. He went to Cal Poly, an engineer and kind of self-made and done well in his life and his career. And, you know, and I'm the oldest of three. I can probably point to exactly what my entrepreneur journey and my business journey kind of took off. And when I realized I really want to be a CEO is, you, you've heard of an organization called Junior Achievement?
No, tell us about that.
So Junior Achievement's here in the States and it's a nonprofit and it focuses on bringing kids kind of junior high, high school together and they meet and they do projects. So think of it like, so you have Boy Scouts, which is like an overarching thing, and then have Junior Achievement, is very much focused on entrepreneurship and business and life skills and that kind of thing, right? And so I was in Junior Achievement and I still remember the very first project I ever worked on. We worked on it. A bunch of it was like seven or eight of us working on this Junior Achievement project. And we needed to build emergency car kits. And I was 12 years old, and it was car kits and within it, this is obviously pre cell phones and all this other stuff, right. But there was, we put pens and paper to write notes for people in this car kit, we had an inflatable, like a canister that would inflate your tire, if you got a flat tire to get you going. And to show you how long ago this was, the pay phones were still a dime. So we'd put a dime in there, right?
And so we had this nice kit and we would sell the kit for $10. And we'd go around knocking on doors, just, Hey, we've got this emergency car kit, you need a car kit for your car? And, you know, I made it with these other guys. We went on and sold it. And I was the number one salesperson. And I still remember that and I got some award and that was really exciting to me was to go out there and build it. So that's my first kind of lemonade stand kind of story. Right. And then from there, I was always the one raising my hand to try new things and different projects. And my undergrad was in International Business and, you know, my internships, my first internship was in Paris. My second internship was in Sydney. And there's a whole funny story about that to save for later, Vicki. But I did, I did an internship in Sydney and to make a long story short, you know, this is pre-internet and the travel agent who was helping me and I was 21 years old, they ended up booking me at a hotel in King's Cross.
You me, I'm like, wait, okay, I don't get it. Tell me the joke.
And so, and so for those of you are not familiar, you, so it was, it was basically the red light district of Sydney at the time. And so, so anyways, eventually I got out, I got out of there and I went somewhere else, but you know, it was, it was, was quite interesting. And so I did that. And so, and then from there, I started my career and you know, I, one of the things you learn early on in life is for my advice to young kids is you have to go to the job. The job's not going to come to you.
So I was recruited to go join a computer company in the Midwest of the US. And then from there, I got recruited to go to Dell and I was at Dell for quite some time. I was one of Michael's first Executive Assistants. That was exciting. And I worked my way up to Dell and ended up running the West Coast for Dell and ended up moving to China and Hong Kong for Dell for a couple of years and then Singapore for a couple of years. And then fast forward now, I'm CEO of my third company and here we are.
Gosh, it's a little hard to fast forward through a history like that. I totally get why you're fast tracking us, Rajiv, but really some significant, significant experience moments in that, not to mention your mentor being Michael Dell.
Yeah, Michael is fantastic. Having been at a Dell competitor for a couple years and then coming over, that really was something that really helped really propel my career. So, you know, and I knew from a very early, early age that I wanted to be like him or do something like him. Right. And obviously I was never going to run Dell because he was only three years older than me at the time. And he still is only three years older than me.
But I knew, but I had that bug. I knew what I wanted to do. And I was excited to do it. And having him as a mentor and a friend and a colleague was helpful in my career as I developed my career. And just learning, right? Learning how to be a leader. He was fabulous teaching me how to be a leader and the things that were the non-negotiables for him and watching him. Watching him do amazing things and even watching him make some mistakes. But it was fabulous to be in that environment.
Thank you for sharing that and it's a conversation we often have with entrepreneurs in our community and that the nugget of that conversation is the importance of having someone like that in your life. Someone whose shoes you can walk in or whose mess ups you can witness and go, oh, okay, that didn't feel good, I can do that differently. And just being able to be a part of a community of people who are going in the direction where you want to go. Is that something you could speak into?
Yeah absolutely. You know, for me, you're never too old to learn or you're never too young to learn. And one of the things I'll be honest with you, the number one thing I learned from Michael Dell was, hire people smarter than you, give them the tools to do their job and get out of their way. That was number one.
And number two, I learned from him was if you ever found yourself being the smartest person in the room, you have the wrong room.
I mean, there's all these kinds of cliches and things you hear and there's this Steve Jobs quote of, hire smart people so they can tell us what to do. And all that stuff is true. Some people might find those things funny nowadays, but it's true. Those things matter. And one of the things I've learned is, if you ever want to be a CEO, if you ever want to take on that type of a role, you're on being an entrepreneur. You have to really believe in yourself before the team can believe in you, before investors can believe in you, before partners can believe in you.
You have to believe in yourself. If you're not willing to believe in yourself, don't do it. Cause it's just not going to work. You have to believe in yourself. You have to have thick skin. You have to be willing to take the risks. You have to believe in yourself. You have to know that you're going to make mistakes. You got to roll with the punches and you have to deal with it. And I'll tell you, there might be times when you might suffer some imposter syndrome. I've gone through that as well.
And I'll be honest with you COVID was extremely, extremely, extremely hard on my company and on me. And we can talk about that as well and what happened and how we recovered and the attitude about that. But yeah, but those things really matter. Having that mentor and being able to pull back your memories to understand how he or she, or they may have done something is really important and helpful. And it can be a parent, it can be a sibling, it can be whomever, I don't care who it is, but just find somebody who you feel like can really help you level set your future.
Yeah, that's absolutely so important. Let's lean in a little bit on what you just mentioned about imposter syndrome, because we know that that's something a lot of us deal with. You know, I've certainly had my share of it in the past to tell us about your experience with that. And how'd you overcome it?
I'll be honest with you, I really didn't have it until COVID. And so I have, I think the good or bad about my personality is that I'm extremely confident in what I do and how I do it. And I'd like to think I'm really, really good at my job. I'm really good at being a CEO. I love it. Right. And when COVID happened, my company lost over 55 % of our revenue overnight.
Because 55 % of our business was face-to-face events and nobody was doing events. And so we had hotel contracts that no one would let us out of. And it's just a whole nightmare mess. Our profitability dropped by 80%, layoffs and pay cuts and we didn't take a dollar of government money. So we didn't take any PPP money. And that was important at some level, right? Cause I didn't feel like taxpayer dollars should come to fund what we're doing. And as much as we wanted to do those things, we were just kinda, but when those things were happening, you're like, who are you gonna call? Like there's no mentor to call. Because Michael had never been through it.
Yeah, so true.
You know, you guys had never been through it. No members of my board had never been through it. My suppliers had never been through it. No one's ever been through it. Right. And so who do you call? There's nobody to call. And so you have to figure it out yourself. And so I remember after about a 24 or 48 hour pity party I woke up and I said, all right, I'm to put on my big boy pants and we're going to go figure out how to do this and we're going to, we're going to survive and we're going to thrive and we're going to be the case study Harvard writes about because there is no case study today. So we're going to be the case study Harvard writes about in 10, 15 years, about how to overcome this challenge and what we did. And I'm glad we did because the number one takeaway is, that when some things happen, you have to put on your own mask first before you can help others. And I had to go through that myself. I had to go through my own journey to get there. And once I did - it was pretty quick, but once I did, the rest of my team kind of fell in line. And so, you know, it was, it was quite challenging. So I would say that there was that, that COVID window was a real challenge for us. But we figured it out. We thrived. We're still recovering from it, to be honest. You know, our events business is not 100% back. We're about 70 % back. So we still got some work to do. We're still probably about a year away from being fully back on those events, on some of our events, but the rest of it's doing okay.
And so, but, you know, I went and wrote my first book during COVID, my leadership book, Chase Greatness. I wrote that during COVID. That was more of a mental exercise for me. And then that did well. And now, as you know, I've written an AI book. So, but even before that, the way I got here, the way on that journey was after I left Dell, I was recruited to be the president of an e-commerce company. And then, you know, did that for a few years. And then, worked with a VC and we essentially funded and built a startup that I was CEO of in the audio technology space, did that for a few years, sold that company and then was sitting around when this other new opportunity came along and knew that this company was, it was really challenged and it was essentially an absolute major turnaround situation.
It was an extremely entrepreneurial situation that needed to happen. so we did, we did all that stuff. And so now we're on a good path and we'll see what happens here over the next 12 months.
I really enjoy how you just so casually talk about some really, you know, worth worthy significant business ventures. I expect that that's because that's just your everyday, but people who aren't quite there perhaps are aspiring to be there. I think we can't discount the work the effort, the personal development journey, the leadership development that goes into arriving at a place like this, where you can casually talk about the past.
Yeah, look, I mean, you know, it's a journey. Everybody has got to go through their own journey, their own path. You don't have to follow my path or what I did or why I'm doing what I do. But I'll tell you the number one key to success, I think if you're going to be a good CEO is you have to have an amazing team underneath you. And you have to empower them. Sure, there are some that are successful where everything runs through them and they're dictatorial about it. And that's fine. And some of that may work, but the cultureās crap, right? And I take the tact of, the more I can get, the more I can build an amazing management team. And I like to think I have an absolutely, I have a fabulous management team. I've got a fantastic management team. I invest a lot in them to be great. And they do a wonderful job and they then manage the rest. And so my main point is that people focus on customers. Well, and usually when they talk about customers, they focus on that external customer.
I focus on the internal customer first. So my priority is my internal customer period. It's my employees and my team. Because if they're, if they're doing well, if they're, if they have the tools, if they're doing well, if they have what they need to be successful, then the external customers will take care of itself. Right. So yeah. And so, so that's what I focus on. So, so that's my, I like to think that's my job. My job is to make sure I'm taking care of my customers and hence, you know, and I take care of them, not just within the walls of the business. try to help them outside the walls of the business as well. That's why in my first book, Chase Greatness, I coined this phrase, āenlightened leadershipā. To me, enlightened leadership builds on, it builds on servant leadership, which I know you both are familiar with. And it says, Hey, Laura, Hey, Vicki, I'm not just here to take care of you within the walls of the company. I'm also here to support you outside the walls of the company.
Right? And so that's what I try to focus on. That's what I try to do. And it works.
And you explain this philosophy and this approach in the book with those who are interested in perhaps learning more about Enlightenment Leadership.
Yeah. The name of the book is called Chase Greatness, Enlightened Leadership for the Next Generation of Disruption. Take a look. So that's the first book. It did really well when it came out. It was released in 2021. It did really well. It was a bestseller and that was exciting. And so it did extremely well. I do some talks on leadership. And then from there over time, the AI thing is interesting for me because the company that was sold, that VC Audio the VC technology company I was running, that one was focused on the audio space. And we were building AI audio algorithms back then. So this was like 12, 13 years ago. And so this is before Chat GPT. It's all based on machine learning. And so after we sold the company I'm like, all right, well, I want to learn how the sausage is made a little bit. So I went to MIT and I got certified in AI from MIT. And then fast forward two years ago November 30th of 2022, we wake up one morning and there's an announcement that Chat GPT 3.5 is here. It's like, boom, right? It exploded. And the interesting thing is that my company, we cover data analytics, we cover business intelligence, we cover cloud infrastructure, we cover cybersecurity. So covering all these things anyways, and then this AI thing. This new way and we were machine learning AI, but then this whole Chat GPT thing, generative AI came out and caught everybody by surprise.
And that's when I literally decided that day that this, to me, it's going to be the greatest invention since we invented electricity and it's going to have the biggest impact on society since electricity. And it's going to be something that every single, every single person on the planet has to know and learn. It's going to transform every aspect of our lives, every aspect - from how we make products, to medicine, to transportation, every single thing is going to get AI-ified, to speak. So that's why I wrote the book, AI Made Simple. It's targeted at, in my mind I'm like, okay, I'm going to write this book so my 80 year old mom at the time could read and understand what AI is all about. Right. And so that's why I wrote the book and yeah, and it's done well. And I checked, literally checked before this call, it's still a top 10 book and it's been out for almost 20 months now. Yeah, so it's done well.
It's so exciting. It's exciting. Now I wish I'd read the book before we chatted. However, I'm going to really invite you Rajiv, just blow my mind about AI. When you talk about it's going to be in everything. Okay. Yep. We can acknowledge and accept that, but how, but why? And not even why, how is my life going to change as an entrepreneur, as a business person? Because of it. Let's even just go five years forward. Crystal Ball?
Yeah, look, five years from now, AI agents are gonna be ubiquitous. Five years from now, you will have, did you ever watch those Avengers movies or those Iron Man movies?
You did Laura. So Vicki, you didn't watch them yet. So, I'll give you a few examples. So in those Iron Man movies, Iron Man, Tony Stark, he had an AI, he had an AI called Jarvis. And this was like a living breathing, living in the walls of his life. Right. And that's essentially an agent in this AI agent that lives. So you will have your own AI agent kind of living in your walls and you'll wake up in the morning and you'll say, pick the name of your AI, I don't know. John.
Hey John, good morning. What's on my calendar today? You have this, this, this, you also have tonight, don't forget, you have a podcast, you have the Resilient Entrepreneur podcast with Laura and Vicki tonight at six o'clock. Damn, I forgot I also have a workout at that time. Do me a favour, can you please reach out to the gym and let them know I can't make the six o'clock workout until we schedule for tomorrow? Sure, no problem. And the AI, my AI will talk to their AI and to reschedule it. And then my AI will come back to me proactively and say, okay, it's done. You're rescheduled. It's just stuff like that.
Do we have to wait five years for that?
Vicki wants it now!
So agents are starting to roll out now. You know, I think 2026, 2027 will be kind of the year of the agent, but this stuff only works as much as computing power increases.
So if you think about AI development, the AI today will be 10 trillion times smarter by 2030. Trillion. Trillion times smarter than it is today. And think about how smart it is already. Right now, Chat GPT is essentially a high school and above level of education. Some are saying by the end of this year, it'll have, maybe sooner, a PhD level of intelligence. So if that's the case, imagine what it's going to be like in five years.
You're now approaching, you know, Star Trek, Lieutenant Commander, data level stuff, right? Everybody will have a robot in the house. You'll have a robot that just like Rosie from the Jetsons, right? You're not going to have the Terminator robots, but you will have robots in your house that will do laundry, that will do the dishes, right? So you don't have do it, right? Now warehouses around the world are going to have robots in the warehouses. Factories are going to become more automated, to drive automation.
I'll give you another thing that in the next five years, I will tell you, think in the next five to seven years, we could very well be living in a world where we start to eliminate all car accidents. How about that? Why? The reason why is because we will all be in smart cars. It doesn't mean electric cars. I mean, our cars will be smart. So right now, if you have a car and it gives you lane departure warning, right? It beeps at you. When you're going over the lane, it beeps at you and it tries to correct you, Or it shows you it's got a little blind spot indicator on the side mirror, right? Those are smart tools that are sensors that are built in, right? Cameras and all that stuff. Well, what'll happen is that imagine a world where if I'm driving on the highway and Vicki, you're driving on the highway and all of sudden I slam on my brakes, right? And right now you probably rear end me. Car accident, you might hurt yourself, whatever, right? But in the future, what will happen is my car will always be talking to your car. And so if I slam on my brakes, your car will automatically slow down and know it's happening and stop. For example, right? If I'm departing out of this lane, your car will recognize that and move back or move forward or move to the side or automatically, right? Will take control and move that. So it's kind of like autopilot on an airplane, like so you'll almost have that type of technology. And so if that happens, think of the domino effect. You know what the number one cause of hospital emergency rooms visits are around the world?
Car accidents?
Car accidents. So if we can eliminate 70, 80, 90% of car accidents, what's the domino effect of that to society? A, not as many people are dying. Number one. Number two, that means hospital resources don't have to be used for that they can be used for other patient care, right? Doctors, nurses can be focused on other things, right? So three insurance rates will hopefully be more manageable and come down because you don't have that anymore. There'll be other things, right? So there's that.
I apologize, I'm going to do something. I'm not trying to be rude, but I'm going to read something to you, right? I was having a conversation with someone today about AI and cancer. you know, someone brought up today how, you know, Larry Ellison is the CEO of Oracle, you know, right? And he said, he was on a talk and he said that in the next 5 to 10 years, we could absolutely find a cure for cancer. Right. And people didn't understand how that works. And so he talked about how the AI is essentially going to be able to build custom vaccines per person based on your own, based on your own DNA. Right. So imagine that, right? So that's what's crazy. Think of it as, AI is a highly advanced problem solver. Just like how Chat GPT generates sentences by analyzing patterns in language, imagine one that analyzes patterns in biology studies, it'll study. So there's three of us here, right? It'll study each one of ours, unique genetic and biological information and codes such as our DNA, our RNA, our individual proteins, because everybody's different, right? You know, and itāll also then understand the makeup of my body and the cancer cells in your body ike, why don't I get it? Why did you get it? Like, you know I mean? It'll understand that. And then once it has that data, and by the way, data is going to be the new oil. And to be successful in AI, you got to know data, but this is data. So the AI is now receiving data about our own biology. The AI, once it has the data, can now go and design proteins that act like little precision, tiny tools and then these proteins get custom engineered and they go out and seek out and attack only the cancer cells in our body while leaving the healthy cells alone.
Because right now you have all this chemo and radiology and it just hurts everything, right? So it's like having your own personalized medicine factory that creates a treatment just for you. Because right now it's one size fits all. If you have high blood pressure, it's one size fits all. Imagine a customized AI solution that says, I'm only going to treat your high blood pressure because you have a unique type of high blood pressure and here's what we're going to do just for you.
So the goal here is to harness the power of AI to create these treatments that are not just one size fits all, but that are tailored specifically to my body, to your body, and the way our body handles it. Because God forbid one of us gets cancer, the way our bodies are going to react differently, because they're just different. So how do we now do that? And this approach will maximize the effectiveness while minimizing side effects and revolutionize how we treat illnesses like cancer or other things. And so look, if you are someone who is blind, you'll be able to see in the next 5 to 10 years. If you're someone who is deaf, you'll be able to hear. If you're someone who can't walk, you're going to be able to walk. Right. So that's what's coming. That's what's coming. So.
That's amazing
So we could be eternal.
I don't know about eternal, we won't be eternal, but we could definitely be living longer lives. And that's the other thing, right? How will our social norms be affected? So think of it that way, right? So if the retirement age, for example, in the States is roughly 67 years old, but if now my kids or my grandkids are living to 120 or 130 or whatever the age is, well, why are they retiring at 67? Maybe they have to retire at 87 or 97, right? That if that's the case, then that means what does that do to social security and healthcare and Medicare? You know, so there's all these different kinds of things. To me, I think AI is going to usher in what I call the world of abundance. And I think we are probably in the next 5 to 10 years, a three day, a three day work week and anything you want to accomplish in your life, you'll be able to accomplish.
Like think of it this way. Do you guys have young kids by any chance? Laura, how old is your kid?
I do, 16 and almost 12.
All right, so your 16 year old, what are they studying? Are they studying math?
Yeah, yeah, of course, math and all the regular subjects.
What are they studying in math?
I don't know. He doesn't tell me anymore. But I'll tell you, my daughter, I know what she's doing. She's doing percents, fractions, working out cost of an item to bring to Bermuda and working out all the different percentages and duty and that sort of thing.
Okay, so let's talk about her for a second. Let's hypothetically, I'm sure she's super intelligent, but let's just hypothetically assume she's struggling with math. Okay? In the past, you'd go find a tutor and you'd hire a tutor and they will either do it virtually on Zoom or they'll be, or you have to go to their house or they come to your house or whatever, or it's the teacher who stays late and you hire, they'll pay you an extra $40 or whatever on the side and just come over and just help, right?
But now you can go to Chat GPT and say, Hey, Chat GPT, I want you to be Albert Einstein. And you give Chat GPT a persona of Albert Einstein because it's trained on Albert Einstein. I want you to train my daughter who's 12. She's struggling with fractions and decimals and whatever. Right. And now you have Albert Einstein being the tutor for your daughter for free or $20 a month. That is crazy. Right. Imagine if your son says, Mom Iām really into astronomy and I really want to learn more about astronomy and space travel. Well, tell Chat GPT to take on the persona of Galileo. Would you not want to have Galileo train your son? Yes, you would, right? Or if your son says, boy, I really want to check out the theatre and I really want to learn how to write plays. Well, have your son get tutored by Shakespeare, right? And what'll happen is in the future is your AI agent will take on the persona of Shakespeare. And literally you'll have an agent and you can have a hologram with it or they'll wear their virtual reality goggles. And literally a virtual reality or an agent will, holographic image of Shakespeare can pop up and train your son on how to write a play or how to direct a play, or say be Steven Spielberg or whatever, right? So my point is, that anything that you want to accomplish in your life, personal, family business you will be able to accomplish. And that to me will create at some point a world of abundance. So anything you want, you will be able to have. That's the future we're headed down. And by the way, it's gonna be a while until we get there, but that's the future we're headed down.
Yeah. It's such a mix between exciting and terrifying at the same time. I think as a business owner and as a just person growing kids, raising children into this new world, it's so hard to know what the next step is. If I'm directing them in the right way, if I'm directing myself in the right way, because I think you're right. There's so much coming and it's coming at us really, really fast. And I think like a lot of business owners were worried about - are we doing what we're supposed to be doing? Are we learning what we're supposed to be learning? Of course everyone's tinkering around with Chat GPT and some of the other stuff that's already popping in. My daughter showed up just speaking about kids with AI on her Word. And I said, what's this? Ghostwriter.ai. I said, what's this? It's brilliant. It's brilliant. I was like, my God, you don't even need to learn how to write. That's gonna help you. And I was like, it's just going to become so, like you said, ubiquitous in our life that it almost feels like it's not noticeable, but yet it's so there. And what are entrepreneurs supposed to do?
Well, look at your daughter, for example, right? You said that she won't need to learn to write. Yeah, probably. But you know what she's not to learn to do is she's going to have to learn how to become a really good storyteller because the key to success with AI is going to be your ability to interact with AI. That's the lesson, like your daughter and son, or anybody who's listening, their daughters and sons, whoever's listening, make sure they become really, really good storytellers. Because the more you can command the prompt box and be an amazing storyteller in that bot, the better your results are going to be. The three of us can go right now to ChatGPT and we can have it say, I don't know, create me, show me how to make a puzzle from A to Z about the world map or whatever, you know, right now.
You can write one sentence, it'll tell you what to do or, and Vicki, you'll get a very generic answer. Now, Laura, you might give it four or five sentences and you'll get a lot more detailed answer. I'm going to give it 500 word. So it's going to be 10, 15 sentences and say, this and take this and account, take that account, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. Cause I know how to do this. And my answer is going to be so detailed that I'm going to be light years ahead of you in the developing of that map company. For example, I'm just making it up. So being able to interact and talk to it, learning how to talk to it and getting over this mental break, this mental block and what I'm finding in people's heads while I'm talking to a robot, I'm talking to an algorithm. Yeah, but you have to get over that. So like when I had this talk, I talked about the six key takeaways for AI success in business. And number two is be curious, not judgmental. Right. And that to me, and by the way, I stole that from Ted Lasso.
You know, and that's a hundred percent true. And that's what it is. You have to be really curious and everything's all relative. So you talk about advancement in business. You talk about advancement in science with AI. It's coming out as fast. Well, how fast do we think when electricity was admitted, how fast did that come at people? How about when, when Henry Ford invented the combustible engine, if he had asked his customers what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. Right. So think of the space race from the time the Wright brothers launched their plane in Kitty Hawk to the time we put men on the moon was only 65 years.
And you think about all the development that came out of the space race, microwave ovens, foil blankets, baby formula stuff, right? I mean, think about all those developments and new inventions. And that's one reason why I'm actually kind of excited about this Mars thing, because I think there's gonna be so much new advancement that's gonna come that we haven't thought of, right. And so that's where we are. And as entrepreneurs, what's gonna happen is, that In the past, maybe you needed 20 people in your entrepreneurial startup. Well, now you might need only 10 because AI can do the job of the other 10. So I think what you're going to see, and if you think about the iPhone, right? When this first launched, Steve Jobs, that's my dog, by the way.
Oh, he's lovely.
So, so, but you know, when Steve Jobs first launched the iPhone, you know, it was basically an iPod, and a video and the phone all in one. And, there were no apps. There was no Uber. There was no Airbnb, right? There was no, there was no app to go make a booking on Marriott via an app, right? Or whatever, book your flight on United or whatever, right? There was no Instagram. There was no Facebook and you know, whatever. So you need it. YouTube was still young, but there was no video, you know what I mean? So, but my point is, that look how fast and we're on what version, this is the iPhone 16. So look, the world has changed because of just the smartphones, whether it's iPhone or, or Android, right? Look how the world has changed right now. Google is testing and rolling out Waymo self-driving taxis around the country which I've been in and they're crazy. It's awesome. Right.
So, but that's today, five years from now, there's going to be Waymos everywhere. People, you kids, there's a chance, there's a good chance, Laura, your kids may never need to go get a driver's license because their car is going to be so smart. It's just, they'll have a car, but it'll just drive them wherever they need to go. Right. So it's those kinds of things. Right. And so that's where we are in that. That's kind of where we're headed. And as an entrepreneur, you know, you have to be on top of these tools and these advancements and the worst thing you can do is - I have this saying that most companies and people fail not because they did the wrong thing, they did the right thing for too long. So basically that message is don't become Blockbuster to someone's Netflix.
Yeah, I think it just definitely speaks into the entrepreneurs need to be the ones who are really open to the opportunities and the gaps. Because like you just mentioned, there was a phone before there were apps. But once there was a phone and people realized we could create apps for that phone, they moved really quickly. Entrepreneurs moved quickly into that space, created all the apps. So now we have this high functioning phone that we can do absolutely everything on. That happened really quickly. Like you said, that happened really quickly. And now with AI, I think it's accelerating the rate even faster than we can imagine.
Well, what's going to happen is you're going to see, like I said, you're going to have a lot more entrepreneurs. And so right now there's a kid somewhere in his or her bedroom or in their garage, and they're going to build a billion dollar company with only two people. It's happening somewhere. There's a kid right now, some 18, 19, 20 year old kids sitting in college, the next Michael Dell, the next Bill Gates, the next Mark Zuckerberg, whoever they might be, the next Steve Jobs who's gonna figure something out and they're gonna have the next billion dollar idea and it's just gonna be one or two people in the company.
But the point is that everybody's gonna have access to that. Everybody can be an entrepreneur because everybody has access to the same tools. And it doesn't matter if you're in India, it doesn't matter if you're in Adelaide, it doesn't matter if you're in Shanghai, China, right? Or you're in Barcelona, it doesn't matter where you are. You have the same access to the tool I have sitting in Southern California, or you have sitting where you are. So it doesn't matter. So it levels the playing field for everybody. So the entrepreneurs of the future are going to be the ones who really know how to use, speak, and tell the story and become really good data, really become storytellers with the AI.
I like what you're saying about location is not important anymore because I think that's something new for this time is that you used to have to be in New York or Silicon Valley or in London in order to be the mover, the shaker, the closest to the technology, closest to the money. I think that's changed completely now. I think partially because of COVID. Tell me if you think I'm right or wrong there, but also because of all these advancements in AI. It's moving it to where anybody with fast internet can make an impact and create something.
Yeah, no, I think even in my company, everybody's 100% remote. Right? A few people go into an office, I go into a small little executive office. But most people are remote. And to me, if the job gets done at 10am or 10pm, the job is going to get done. As long as the job gets done, we're making our numbers, it's fine. So to me, this whole return to office thing is fine. It's not a problem for us. For some other people, it's a problem, fine. More power to them, let them let them make their decisions. Right? But for me, it's not a problem. Now, I think that the good news about entrepreneurship. You're right. It be, it'll happen anywhere. It can be in London. It can be anywhere in the world. It'll happen everywhere. You know, with that being said, I still think that if someone wants to go raise big money, they still need to figure out how to have somewhat of a foothold here. It's either going to be here or it's going to be in like maybe even Dubai or maybe even Japan. but having a foothold here in Silicon Valley or somewhere in California. It's because these investors are going to want to see you, talk to you, understand you, understand the progress. It's helpful. It's not going to hurt. Yeah, but I mean, you could, but my point is, my point is you can still develop your solution anywhere in the world, but, having that proximity does, will assist, you know, you on, we'll, we'll assist you on your journey. It'll help. It won't, it can't hurt. It'll help.
Yeah, that makes sense.
I have so many questions and I'm so excited and you achieved the challenge. You blew my mind. So thank you. And I'd love to just have dinner with you for a couple of hours and just hear more because I know there's more in there. And thank goodness you wrote that book. And I believe it's your first book of probably many, because I also know that your passion is to make, you said the word earlier, access - make AI accessible to all, democratize this. Tell us how you're going to do that or how you're already doing that.
Well, look, I think the best way to describe that right now is the book is targeted at every person, right? It's not targeted at engineers. It's not targeted at the CEO of Meta. You know, it's not targeted at, it's not targeted at programmers. It's targeted at you, right?
It's designed to give everybody a basic foundation and understanding of what it is, how it can be used and the benefits and value it can bring to your life. And that's what it's for. And that's step one on this journey, right? We'll see where step two goes, but step two will be probably more talking about how to really master the prompt box, step three will probably be more along the lines of understanding the different tools that are coming out and the tools are coming out fast and furious. Right. And then step four will probably be some sort of training solution, right. Some training offerings, some training solutions. If this is a basketball game, this is literally the very first pass in the very first quarter of the game. This is, that's how early this is.
Or if it's a baby, the baby is still, it's just standing up in the crib, you know? So we're not even in the crawl phase yet of this whole technology. And it's already doing so well, but that's what really we are, and it's advancing so fast. So my goal here is to try to democratize and make it easy for everybody to understand. My goal is for everybody, I can give my book to everybody in the world so they can just start to figure out. Because I really think, and granted I'm biased, I'd like to think that the book does a really nice job of just simply explaining what it is and how easy it is to start using it.
Iām excited about that. Please, every single person listening to this order that book, the link will be in the show notes. Please, it's definitely our mission too for entrepreneurs to avail themselves of what is already at our fingertips. We're talking about what might be happening, what will be happening in five or ten years time. In fact, let's face it, we're human, we sit here and look into the future and we can only predict what we know now.
But as you've already described, it's an exponential growth. So we actually can't predict, well, to a fully accurate degree of exactly what it will be. We can only surmise what's possible. But if we haven't seen the possibilities, we just have to be open to those possibilities. And as you listen and watch this podcast episode, I urge you to have a look at that book and to think more openly about AI. And if somebody approaches you and says, AI, it's going to steal jobs. It's going to shut down economies. You know, I'm a coach, Rajiv. I'm a business coach. I'm a personal development coach. And I know that AI can coach with a voice. I just need to speak into it. And the app comes back to me with this lovely, soft, gentle voice and guides me on what to do next. Am I going to not be a coach anymore? Of course not, because it's about relationships. And you touched on that. It's about not being lazy about being human. That's how I see this whole thing. We must lean in and get better at doing relationships. The connection piece. That's my two cents.
Yeah, you're 100% correct. You know, and on the job thing, look, is there going to be some job displacement? Sure, there is, but there's also gonna be whole new industries that are going to be created that we don't even know yet. Right. So just like I go back to when the first PCs landed on people's desks, people thought all computer programmers were going to go away, right? All these people would lose their jobs. And some of them did, but then they got retrained to be computer programmers or PCs and laptops or whatever the case might be and how that changed the world and learning Excel and how that changed people and financeās life, or think about how Adobe changed the way marketers created projects. Right. So think about how the iPhone has changed the way we interact with people and talk to people and wearing AirPods. And, know, you, the three of us are in three different parts of the world and we're all having this conversation on Riverside podcast, a podcast didnāt exist 10, 15 years ago. Right. So my point is there's gonna be new companies and new industries coming that way thatās gonna create new jobs. Now this is what I will tell you is the case. There is gonna be job loss and the people that lose their jobs are the people that don't use AI. So if you're gonna lose your job, you're gonna lose your job to someone that knows how to use AI. That's where the job loss is gonna come. So you don't have to listen to me and you can think I'm crazy and people can listen and say, Rajeev is full of you know what, that's fine. That's no problem. I mean, I've been called worse. You don't have to get the book and I just, I just feel like it's my job to pound the table and to tell people, look, I think it's coming. I think you should adopt it. I think you should learn it. I think you should use it in your personal family and business life. And the more of an expert you can become on these tools, the better off your life is going to be and the better position you're going to be for the future.
Yeah, absolutely. And these kids that are coming out of school in the next five to 10 years, they are so used to technology. They've never not had technology in some way in their life and they have no fear of it. They want to use it. They want to grab on to every, I my kids are the ones introducing me to new stuff all the time, like I said earlier. So I just know there's so much more of that coming out, but I am curious because I've had this thought for a while now, how far behind is education in this new space because I've got kids in school and I see what they're learning and how they're learning. And I've heard of universities banning chat GPT. I think, oh, hang on.
Like kids need to know how to use the tools, not just ban the tools because they're worried about cheating. I'll teach them how to use the tools to write even better is more my mindset. But how far behind do you think is education and also government? Because that's a whole other kettle of fish.
Well government is like moving a giant aircraft carrier, itās going to be slower to adopt, let's forget about government for now. I think education is starting to catch up. I'm hearing more and more how education is starting to embrace tools. Look, here's the thing. The whole thing about the cheating piece, imagine when the internet became ubiquitous, right? Kids can go to research, you know, before you'd have to go to the library, you had to get the microfiche, you know, and now it's all online and you can copy and paste and do stuff that way and whatever. Right. So there was always ways to do some of these things.
The thing though, is that I think the smart schools and the smart teachers are going to realize, okay, I understand that if you're going to write a paper on World War II, I understand that you're probably going to use Chat GPT. Okay. But here's the thing. Your grade is not going to be based on you using Chat GPT. Your grade is going to be based on how well you absorbed information that Chat GPT provided and how accurate is it because Chat GPT is not perfect. It's got some issues. So you still have to go through and read it. You have to double check the sources. You have to make sure it's right. So they're still learning that, but their grade is going to follow more of that case study style of method where their grades are going to be more based on their ability to interact in and how well they annotated and how well they understood the data, right? How well they understood the information provided.
So gone will be the days of true and false questions and probably multiple choice. It'll be more based on, okay, Laura, tell me why the US entered WW II. Well, it entered WW II because of this, that, and that and whatever, right? So your grade will be based on that. So it'll be more that case study style method. Now that's the way I think the grading and all that stuff is going to go learning from that perspective.
However, if you want to think about the classroom of the future, I think the classroom of the future is going to be all AI and sensor based.
It's going to be AI, AI agents and sensor based. And what will happen is that each kid will have their laptop and they'll have their agent and AI in the room. We'll talk about, and just like the smart boards are now in classrooms, right? So there'll be a smart board and the teacher's doing a lesson and then it'll say, okay, tell us this, this, here's this thing on, the quadratic formula, right. in calculus or whatever. Now the sensor and the agent will know which students are getting it right away. Oh, so we have 30 kids in the class. 10 have gotten it right away. 10 are kind of working their way through it with the help of the AI and the agent to understand it. The other 10 are just not getting it in the struggling. Well, if you're the teacher, you become a conductor in the classroom. So you're going be more like a conductor in the classroom. So you're going to say, okay, kids, the 10 of you that are getting it, you are going to keep working with your advanced AI agent and you're going to keep moving forward on this problem. You 10 kids that are struggling, you've got it, just keep working here, take a look at this, this and this. And then you are going to go, you're then personally going to spend more time with the 10 that are struggling. Maybe those 10 kids need more handholding to understand. So that's when you sit down with them. What are you struggling with? Now it becomes instead of a classroom that is like, like, you know, one to 30, it starts to boil down to one to one, one to 10, one to five, much like how we talked 30 minutes ago about how cancers could get cured. Everybody learns differently. So the AI will then get customized to say, you know, Rajeev learns differently than Laura learns differently than Vicki. Rajeev needs to absorb the information through video where Laura can absorb the information through the written word. So let me show Rajeev a video on how World War II got started. See what I'm saying?
So my point is that education will be one to one medicine will be one to one. So you will be living in this world where this hyper personalization is going to feel like we're living in this one that it's speaking directly to us. So then the problem, then the problem is we're going to think the world revolves around us more than anything, right? But that's kind of where we're headed. We'll see where it goes. Now I could be wrong with all this stuff.
But, you know, but there's also fears. There's also challenges. There's also scary stuff. Like I, I'm glad my kids are 23 and 21. And I'll tell you, I worry for people that have daughters because for me, the biggest concern with AI is going to be deep fakes. Right. That's when someone takes an image of your daughter and sticks it on the body of somebody doing something they didn't do. Right. Or, you know, God forbid, all someone needs is three seconds of your voice off the podcast and they can record you doing anything, saying anything and doing anything. Because they already have your image. That's all they need three seconds of your voice. So that's the stuff that worries me. That's the stuff that keeps me up at night about this AI stuff. But you know, the good news about AI and social media kind of follow the same path. The good news about social media is that everybody has a voice, the bad news about social media is that everybody has a voice. And the same thing with AI. The good news is everybody has access to the tools. The bad news is, man, everybody has access to the tools. The good people, the good guys, the good guys and the bad guys.
Thanks for planting that idea out there in the universe, Rajeev. Good on you!
It's already out there. I didn't plant it. It's already been out there for a long time.
I think definitely people have been talking about that and it is obviously a huge concern and anyone who's a leader in any public space or like you said, even just a host of a podcast, it's quite easy to do. But I was able to photoshop heads on bodies 20 years ago. So the technology to do that kind of stuff has been around for a very long time.
Right, but now you can do it and you can put it on Instagram and it can go viral in five minutes. And the difference is that you can now take Taylor Swift's head, face, and put it on somewhat like an OnlyFans model body doing things and it can go viral and it has nothing to do Taylor Swift. You can have Taylor Swift saying the N-word or whatever, right? And that goes viral and it looks like her and sounds like her. There's nothing you can do, nothing she can do to stop it. Once it's out.
This absolutely leads into the title of our podcast, which is resilience, Resilient Entrepreneurs. Being resilient, I believe, is going to be so much more important. It's going to be some personal characteristic that we'll all be developing because, as you said earlier, we need to believe in ourselves. And when we believe in ourselves and something like that happens, it might knock us off for a minute but we pick ourselves up and we say, I know who I am and the people around me know who I am. And if there's half a world of people who think I, a famous person, have done something that I didn't, I'm still good with who I am. And then learning how to respond in a way that feels human and authentic. It all comes back to knowing who we are and showing that to the world. Am I naive?
No, you're a PR agent. It's obvious. The PR comes out in that. I think it's going to be interesting what industries are going to rise in this. And PR might be one of them. People might need more public relations to help deal with things and to manage things like that happening. Because like you said, it's going to be easier and easier.
Yeah. I think if, if anything, I think you're gonna see more crisis PR type stuff. Right. I think the day of hiring a PR agency to write you a, spending a thousand dollars on writing a press release is gone because anybody can now use Chat GPT to write a press release. Right. I go back to what I was talking about earlier, right? At end of the day, if you learn how to use the tool, you're going to do the one thing money can't do, right? Which is buy time. The same thing goes for the PR side. You know, if I'm spending money, if I'm spending whatever $5,000 a month for my PR agency, and if all of a sudden their job for me can get done in, I saved them eight, 10 hours a month. Well, that's eight, 10 hours a month that they can now spend on doing what they should be doing, which is pitching, rather than writing press releases and, you know, creating reports, I don't care about that stuff. I want to be, I want to be pitched. I want to be on more podcasts like you guys or whatever, right? You know, so that's where it's going to head. All this mundane day-to-day grunt work stuff, that's going to get all shifted to the AI.
Yeah, I'm good with that.
Yeah, but that's how PR agencies are going to distinguish themselves, right? And by the way, I'm telling you, there's some PR agencies that are going to think this is a bunch of bullsh*t and they're not going to do anything. Like you think about, you think about lawyers, right? I can get Chat GPT if I ask it the right way to write me a full NDA. Well, in the past I had to spend $500 to my lawyer, $1,000 from my lawyer to write an NDA, right? So now Chat GPT does it. I think any kind of language based type of job is ripe for disruption. So outsourcing companies, lawyers instead of a hundred paralegals in your company, you might need only 10. Still need paralegals, but you won't need as many. Right. So, so that's, so that's where some of this stuff is.
I don't want this conversation to end. But we must. We must and we will.
Wow. I know, I know, know, know. Yeah.
It's been fun. It's been fun. Thank you.
It's important to have more and more of these conversations. And I really appreciate your time to really come in and dig deep on the AI. I knew we were going to. You blew Vicki's mind. You definitely blew my mind. I'm still on the fence of whether I am more excited or more nervous about it, but I do know it's a lot to look forward to and I'm very grateful to hear your thoughts on education, because that felt good. That felt good. As a parent, I worry so much about the world my kids are coming into. As an entrepreneur, I worry about the businesses and all the entrepreneurs we help and assist while their businesses are going to manage. Hey, it's time to get on this AI bandwagon. It's time to see what the possibilities are, to figure out what is for you and do what entrepreneurs do best. Find the gaps. Fill them.
And how do we create the gaps, which is what I really heard you say, Rajeev, of creating the gaps and being disruptive. Love it. Thank you. Thank you for your insights. It's been really fascinating and fantastic. So good to meet you.
Yeah, yeah, it's time for that.
Rajeev Kapur (59:39)
My pleasure. Thank you both. I appreciate it.
