there's the man hey jackson how you doing buddy
i'm doing great james lang i'm excited to meet
you yeah likewise i really like uh what you do
you know taking uh actionable insights and real
stories and kind of passing them on to those
following in our footsteps right the bromance
is strong where are you based out of james uh
so i'm in denver yeah but i previously i was
in scottsdale then la before that so but denver
today scottsdale la denver today very good was
that just a trip or did you mean you were you
were stationed or or i i'm from yeah no i was
based in la then scottsdale and now denver so
um yeah just move around a bunch but you know
you follow the dollars follow the opportunity
and uh Certainly tax -wise, moving from LA to
Scottsdale was nice. No, I love visiting LA.
I love visiting. It's fun. Yeah. I love getting
to LA almost as much as I like leaving. Yes.
That's right. I'm down in Ecuador, actually.
Oh, you're the smart guy on this call because
you're doing the expat life where you're saving
a ton of money. Well, that too. That's also for
sure a big part of it. If you're okay with it,
I'll share my vision real quick. Yeah, of course.
We'll switch gears and dive into yours. I'm excited
to talk about AI. Also, by the way, since we've
already no hold bars, like started the conversation,
if we want to, we can use this entire thing as
an episode because it just turned out organically
to be awesome. And if we decide we want to cut
it, then we can cut too. So either way. Yeah,
it's your show, man. Whatever you think your
audience appreciates the most. I love that. It's
my show, but it's your vision. And so we also
always share that with the visionaries that we
have. It's not my vision, it's yours. So we always
want to honor that. But yeah, James, so my vision
is to bridge the economic gap between North America,
South America, and the rest of the world. That's
what I live for every day. So I'm down here in
the southern part of Americas and doing what
I can to help people and bring that dream to
reality. If I make even one small impact on it,
fantastic. But every day I get to just be my
best and show up and try to commit to helping
with that. So what does that look like? Help
me unpack that. It's a great question. In 10,
15, 20 years, it might be lobbying to governments
worldwide. As of right now, it's a first -class
business. We help entrepreneurs with sustainable
revenue growth. And then we have a program called
Operaciones de Trabajo para Latinos. That's opportunities
for work for Latinos. We've got a Spanish show.
I actually just got off the Spanish show as well,
but I have a couple of counterparts who are from
Colombia and Peru and their co -hosts with me
of the Spanish show. And we interview Latinos
about how did they find their first job or how
did they find their current opportunity? What
work did they put in for that? What programs
did they train in? And then we promote those
episodes to help other Latinos jump into the
program. And we give those services away for
free, helping Latinos learn leadership skills
and develop. Oh, there's my. My bell that says
it's time to take my antibiotics. Cause, uh,
even though I enjoy being here, my stomach doesn't
always enjoy me. Oh, I've, I've had Montezuma's
revenge before I've been there. That was terrible.
You know it. Yeah. I live with Montezuma, um,
often. So, um, yeah, I got laid up in Cabo for
about three days straight, uh, past the time
that I was going to fly home. Um, yeah, that
was an experience. You know it, you know it then.
So James, yes, AI. I'm not going to steal the
show from you, but my audience knows a little
bit about what we do and how we do it. So I just
want to say congrats on what you're building
because I saw the playground. And I was like,
oh, cool. This guy, this guy gets it. And, you
know, the AI craze, I love how you point out
too, that, you know, there's a way for AI that
you can ride, you can get crushed by. And that
was really smart. And then I went to the playground
and I wanted to move forward, but I'd saw the
little memo that you don't have to like log in.
And then that one still has like the login thing,
but we're building something similar at first
class business. And I called it Alfred. um you
know meet alfred the butler of we're we're into
heroes and all that so the butler superman and
then we built mr fox as well uh we built both
those characters and we still haven't released
it though so you're ahead of me praise to you
like good job on on moving it forward and getting
things out there um but i mean if you want to
we can just dive right in and start talking about
vision but is there do you have any other questions
for me before we do no it seems like you're super
kind and generous so i appreciate it it's a great
space for a conversation Yeah, man. Well, good.
Then tell me about, tell me about your AI vision
for now. Let's start there and then we can expand
into other visions. Yeah. Well, let me tell you
how we got here on the AI side of things. So
about, and there's a whole bunch more to the
story we can unpack later, but just kind of the
condensed version from somebody who likes to
talk too much. About six months ago, one of my
buddies that I grew up with in Virginia beach
in Virginia, his name's Jeff. After I moved to
Denver, I realized Jeff lives out here too. So
we had gone our own paths, our own ways after
high school. But I was doing the e -commerce,
operational consulting, med tech world, highly
regulated, pain in the butt stuff in the men's
wellness space. And then that same time, he was
doing the AI and big data thing. back in like
2014 like before it was cool so um he now works
for one of the largest um data solutions for
all the insurance companies here in the united
states because you're fortunate you don't have
to you have to deal with uh some stomach illnesses
it sounds like dealing with uh you know the local
water there in ecuador but uh you know we have
to deal with just don't deal with the local water
Yeah, you have the option of not drinking the
local water. See, we don't have the option of
not engaging with the insurance industry here.
So you're one up on me on that one. But anyways,
his background primarily is storing the petabytes
of insurance information, processing claims,
doing actuarial analysis, all that stuff, right?
So we're catching up and swapping war stories.
realizing that just like I knew back in high
school, he's definitely smarter than me. But,
you know, I was like unpacking like, okay, cool.
Like you have this, you know, this AI and big
data skillset, but, you know, coming at it from
a marketer and an operations guy, you know, one
of the most popular things is, you know, these,
these quiz funnels. So if you're trying to sell
a product online, You know, you ask the client
or the customer four or five questions just to,
you know, qualify them and get to know them and
then get their email address. Now you have information,
plus you can hit up their email without having
to pay to reach them again. And I was like, you
know, the problem is we have the goldfish attention
span, which means that, you know, within five
seconds, people are jumping. So we can't go really
beyond five questions in a quiz funnel. But wouldn't
it be cool if we had AI to be able to have conversations
around the questions? So you're still doing.
the five stage quiz. But if you have a question
about the question or something totally random
that you want to ask, you can do that all in
the same place without having to leave and go
search somewhere else. And anyways, that was
kind of our brainchild moment. And he's like,
yeah, we can totally build that. So we build
out this, this kind of prototype. And the problem
is, you know, we run through the first data set
and just the compute to run that data set and
the testing. it was eight hundred dollars in
compute and that's what people aren't really
talking about with ai right is it's so expensive
to operate um you know most computers can't handle
it like you can install an ai system or model
and and you know with python and the infrastructure
there um you can do it but uh good luck getting
it to run unless you have like a really high
-end graphics card and maybe even that's not
enough in some cases so You know, the result
is what we're asking all these cloud systems
to do is so resource intensive that, you know,
it's become expensive to be able to share that.
And so, you know, as things get more expensive
to operate, they become more expensive for the
consumer. And so a lot of us, like if we're using
ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini, you know, or Copilot,
we're all kind of insulated from those costs.
Like all we see is just, hey, this is kind of
fun to play with. but we don't realize it's happening.
Yeah, exactly. I got to pause real quick audience.
We have like a guy who actually understands AI
talking about AI for the first time. No, I shouldn't
say the first time ever, but you're a different
mode. Like you really get the behind the scenes
stuff on AI and you know, everybody's claiming
they're an AI guru these days. And so it's fun
to talk to somebody who understands like the
nuts and bolts behind it to a degree. So. Good
on you, man. Keep going. Oh, well, you've pushed
one of my biggest pet peeves, which is all of
these guys on LinkedIn running around saying
I'm an expert on AI. And last week, they were
expert on blockchain. And the week before that,
they were an expert on residential. I was trained
by the coach of the coach of the coach of the
coach of the coach of the coach of the coach.
Like, you know, this should make me an expert,
right? Exactly. I'll put a little pin in that.
there's two sides to that that are, that are
polarizing opposites. And there's a whole middle
ground that I really appreciate too. But Matt
cuts, the search director of Google was one of
our first investors at the very first startup
that I worked at on local. And I was first, the
first sales rep hired. And you know, we were
an SEO company. And so we, you know, he, but
he immediately put a big, big pin in that. And
he's like, guys, you cannot claim where the SEO
gods, just because I work with you guys. I'm
like, but here's what you can do. He said, the
real sign of an expert is not somebody who knows
it all. A true expert is a person who's willing
to go get the right answer. That's it. Just that
simple. And so I loved that because I had no
degree and I had no background whatsoever in
what we were doing. But I was like, I can be
humble enough to admit I don't know and I can
go get an answer. And that's what he taught was
if you want to be an expert, that's what you
do. You just go get the right answer. And so
I don't hate on that. self -proclaimed. Okay.
Maybe the guru is yes, but the ones who are trying,
but I love that you understand the reality is
reading about chat GBT this week and how they're
not going to be, they have a very small chance
of being profitable by 2035. But the amount of
debt and the amount of money being dumped into
this, you're right. As a consumer, we don't have
to pay attention to that at all. We just get
it. We just get to drink the Kool -Aid, you know,
we just get to use what it is, but. And perhaps
maybe this doesn't help all visionaries out there.
Most of us aren't going to benefit from knowing
the ins and outs of all the back end of AI. But
it is really reassuring. Well, it's reassuring
to talk to somebody who gets it. So go ahead,
man. I'll let you hit on that for sure. Gosh,
there's so many things that you just brought
up that you're hitting all my main themes and
points and things. So I love it. Okay, well,
let's talk about why it matters. So going along
with the example I gave, right, where it costs
us $800 to run one computer. And then we talk
about one, you know, the consumer being insulated,
so they don't understand the cost. Well, for
businesses, they're insulated too. There's AI
startups all over the place. They're offering
these off the shelf solutions that promise to
do all these amazing things. And there's a whole
bunch of things we can unpack there. But the
biggest thing that's relevant to what you just
said is, The problem is these startups, they
have enough capital to get their plane going
down the runway, but they probably don't have
enough capital to keep their AWS bill paid as
they scale unless they raise more money. So you
as a business owner, if you're putting your information
into this system, if you're relying on these
tools, number one, where is the data stored?
Do you own it? And number two, If suddenly a
switch is flipped tomorrow and that company's
out of business, how screwed are you? And a lot
of people aren't thinking about that. And it's
not going to be up to that other business. It's
going to be when, you know, AWS or Microsoft
or Google says, you know what, your bill's past
due. It's, you know, we can't float you anymore.
And they're not able to raise investor funding
for whatever reason. So it's a real danger. It's
a real liability that people aren't really talking
about. And for us, that $800 compute bill. You
know, that was what kind of shut us down for
a second because it was like, yeah, we can go
build this, but it's going to be too expensive
to scale. So, you know, me being the dumb guy
in the room, I'm just like, you know, hey, Jeff,
I'm going to lock you in a room for a little
bit. Go fix it. And so, you know, basically that's
what we did. You know, we bounced ideas back
and forth and, you know, he actually made it
work. But, you know, I was able to bring kind
of the user interface and the UX side of things.
You know, it's really great working with someone
who has such a deep level of knowledge in an
area that you suck at. It's the best in the world.
So, anyways, he was able to, it took us about
six months, and primarily by us, I mean him,
six months to really get something created that
solved this problem. But what we did, and again,
we is Jeff, but we built out this virtual cloud
infrastructure. inside of AWS that has both the
option to data vector in a way that AI can more
easily ingest information, but also adjust. So
you have in a system like this, you have an AI
model, but that AI model is running in an engine.
And so you have kind of what's called a wrapper
around the engine, which is the thing that kind
of filters it out. So when you're talking about,
like when you're talking to chat GPT, the thing
that keeps it from telling you, bad things or
going outside of its guardrails part of that
is in the wrapper that's around the engine so
it's like a filter um which again the engine
is being fueled by the ai model does that kind
of make sense is that fair yeah okay so it makes
sense for those of us who who understood the
words uh that you put together um so but i i
understand the the importance though of making
sure that we're aware of the infrastructure.
We're aware of the liabilities that we have with
basing AIs. And I'm really, really grateful that
my business is not predominantly heavy on AI
itself, because yeah, that would be a nasty disaster
if one of the businesses, if you built in the
backbone of it and then it went up in claims,
it's like, oh, what do you do now? If that's
where the diversification or that's where your
income is coming from. So well said, James, keep
going. Yeah. So I mentioned a moment ago that
The challenge is, you know, the cost to scale,
right? And I also talked about how you can install
AI on your computer and try to run it or run
a model. A lot of people don't realize that,
that there's, you know, hundreds of AI models,
LLMs out there floating around on the web that
you can download. And if you're tech savvy enough,
you can install them. So out of all those models
floating on the web. we found 12 that we really,
about a dozen, maybe a little more now, that
we like for different tasks and different things.
So the cool thing about the solution we built
is we can plug and play those dozen models into
the AI engine based on what task we're trying
to accomplish. And the same goes for the data
vectoring. We can change the formatting a little
bit based on... the task we're trying to accomplish
so the end result of that is that 800 compute
bill uh goes down to about four dollars so it's
a huge difference and you know this isn't something
that's like you know nobody ever thought of how
to do this before but the difference is small
and medium -sized businesses have never had access
to this before so that's what to my knowledge
uh unless they're spending a lot of money uh
because what all the fortune 500s are doing They
have their own internal teams that are building
out their own custom solutions from the ground
up. And companies, the average company out there
doesn't have access to that. No, we don't have
access. We don't have knowledge. We don't have
time as small business owners either. And it's,
you know, it reminds me of in a very loose way
of the podcasting world and how with the podcasting
world, you know, we, a lot of businesses don't
know like, okay, you can have your own studio
in your. in your office now and control your
own media output um you know and lebron james
and jj reddick caught on to that just last you
know what two years ago when they launched mind
the game and it gave lebron the chance to finally
talk about the narrative of how the game went
outside of the controlled media's manipulative
questions you know where they biased him into
like oh you made this decision and you know it's
like it's like the question when your kid asking
your friend i'm going to be completely politically
incorrect here but it's like when you say how
long have you been gay for You know, it's like,
how do you answer questions like that? That's
not how that works. Or how long is a string,
right? Yeah. And so those types of questions,
if we can control our narratives from a PR media
standpoint, now we have entire media outlets
in our offices if we choose to build them out.
And so you're talking about having the same type
of access to knowledge where the knowledge can
empower us to be able to have. better solutions
for us and i'm glad you're building it out because
most of us don't want to build it out we want
to find the people like james who's you know
you claim not to be the smart guy but you're
like the perfect type of dumb guy um in that
yes that's exactly it my my superpower is i'm
this guy in the room and i ask the right questions
and then i get out of the way while the smart
people figure it out and you're genius enough
to learn how to interpret it Right. So I got
to give you the credit on that. I give you the
flowers you don't want. But and it's you know,
I've always been a big collaborator, James. And
so in high school, they called this cheating.
And I'm going to shamelessly say that, you know,
I'm not quite repentant about it. I do feel a
little bit awkward about it. No, like I was there
in biology class and I got the top grade on the
on the test. Right. And so my friends like what
he cheated off of. So and, you know, and she's
like, Paul, don't be jealous. And I go. Paul,
don't be jealous. You know, what I was doing
was I would ask Paul and then once they, once
they figured out, I'd be like, what'd you guys
get on this? And they gave me the answer. And
then if they were confused, I went to the next
group over and I was like, Hey, what about you
guys? How are you guys? Oh, okay. So I just went
back and forth collecting answers, you know,
and it worked out well. So collaborating is something
that in the world of entrepreneurship visionaries,
we cherish. It's like pass notes back and forth,
use people's formulas, let people use your formulas.
grow together. So James, one of the things that
you have on your site is it's about customer
support. And that's obviously a huge area where
Wells Fargo has brutally ruined their customer
support, as has USAA. I'll call out my favorite.
And Verizon. Just terrible, like their implementation.
So it's one of those things where I think most
of us are hesitant to even bother looking at
until it's just like so stupid simple. that it
gets developed. But what's one or two simple
things that a small business can do in order
to perhaps implement AI from a support standpoint
or start looking at how do I even go about finding
the right people to talk to about it? Well, the
first thing... that's someone who's truly an
expert in ai and i don't claim to be one i i
claim to play one on podcasts but the uh the
reality is if the person that's going to give
you the solution is telling you that ai can do
everything they're full of yeah uh in fact a
real expert will tell you ai can't do this this
and this but it can do this really well um you
know the you use customer service examples in
the legal field um this is becoming a thing as
well you have so many uh people taking ai generated
slop into court including lawyers uh filing things
and getting censured by the courts because it's
like really you know you didn't sit there and
fact check any of this and uh i could talk for
hours on that but i won't bore you so anyways
the the place that companies need to go if you're
looking for people think of ai and think of customer
support yeah okay cool ai is no different than
like just I think we should define AI a little
bit better for the purpose of this conversation.
So I think of AI more as something that reduces
the distance between the average human being
and the silicone running the software, right?
So you don't need to go through design iterations
with a designer and then get to have the designer
go to the coders and then the coders go to the
UX people and then build out this whole thing.
you literally tell ai if you treat ai whatever
flavor of ai you're dealing with as an ass kissing
employee it's going to give you what you want
right and so one little tidbit i'll give you
when i do prompting and chat gpt or claude or
whatever i always start out by telling the ai
what it is because it's a blank slate right so
for example my dad's website which is you know
i'll plug it here if you'll let me but Um, you
know, I, I help out his, uh, his law firm, which
is waterfrontpropertylaw .com, which is a really
interesting property law .com. There you go.
So it's a, and it's an interesting area of the
law because riparian rights in America go all
the way back to colonial times, like the King
granted land to people. And then where did the
land go from there? And did the water move and
all that stuff? It's really fascinating if you're
a dork like me, but, uh, anyways, when I was
producing content for his site, the AI would
reference all these legal cases. Some of them
were real and many of them weren't. And almost
none of the descriptions were accurate of the
cases. So thank God he reviews anything before
I post anything on his site to help him out.
And we caught it. But these are examples of where
AI is failing constantly. But again, I go back
to... It's simply democratizing technology. It's
allowing people to code without having to learn
how to code. And so if you can learn how to prompt,
and sorry, I get going on tangents, but going
back to my prompting. So in that legal example
for the law firm site, I would say you're an
expert on waterfront law in the state of Virginia,
and you've worked as an attorney for 20 plus
years. So I'm telling it what it is. And then
I'm saying what I need from you is a blog article.
It's about 500 words. That's keyword optimized
based on this brief, based on this information
that I've attached to the prompt. And then at
the end, I'm saying the content should be about
500 pages, should include a featured image, should
be easily scannable. So when I'm reading it.
So in the end, that prompt has three parts to
it. The first part is, who are you? The second
part is, what are you producing? And the third
part is. What does the final product look like?
And if you give that three part formula and you're
prompting, you're going to get a lot more out
of AI than you would otherwise. But it's also
kind of funny to me that this perfectly rhymes
with what I did as a chief operating officer
and dealing with a 60 person team and trying
to get the most out of our team members and,
you know, coordinating all of the back and forth
between the different departments and making
sure the trains ran on time, but also. the shareholder
and the CEO's vision was executed properly. You
know, if you set people up for success, they'll
deliver what you want more easily, which helps
you succeed. So all of this kind of comes full
circle into AI as an ass -kissing employee. And
if you treat it like one, you're going to get
good results. It's a thought partner, not a thought
leader. Oh, I love that. I love that you said
that. And then way to mic drop it at the end
there. the thought partner, not a thought leader.
It's, it's huge. And I, I look at it kind of
like a teenager, you know, who's, who's really,
really like a prodigy, right? They've got all
this wisdom that they can use for good and for
bad, you know, and they can also manipulate and
change wisdom to get creative on its own. And,
and so we, we have this superpower at our disposal
in our hands that we can utilize, but we've also
got to have the comprehensive analysis skills.
on our end you know of the old school journalist
you know a journalist that's willing to fact
check like you said a journalist that's willing
to do the the nitty -gritty details to figure
out what's there because it can it can royally
hurt anybody very very fast and that that's going
to get to a whole new level here in a couple
years when tesla robots um you know are walking
around everywhere and other robots out there
are starting to implement this but i think i
hope that the world uh gets ahead of the types
of challenges. Like, you know, I, Oh, go quick.
Give me, give me a hot chocolate at Starbucks
as fast as you can. Boom. It runs through the
wall and boom, it runs over and crushes the neighbor's
dog in the process. It runs through the wall
at Starbucks, grabs a coffee, steals it, brings
it all the way back to me. You know, there's
so many tragedies that could happen along the
way where this, it doesn't have a conscious,
um, you know, of like, Oh, there's, there's painful
realities and threats that exist for human beings
that don't exist for me. As a robot entity, they
can't feel any of that. So anyway, I just took
us down a whole another rabbit hole. No, you
didn't actually. It wasn't a rabbit hole, actually.
No, it's all it's all tied in. Right. So here's
another mic drop for you based on what you just
said. So I know we're out of time. So I want
to make sure that you get the opportunity to
do the power mic drop on this. So let's do that.
And man, I'm just going to beg you right now.
Will you come back, please? Absolutely. Yeah.
I'm happy to stay on for a few extra minutes
if that's helpful to you or whatever works for
you. I got to wrap up a little sooner than I
want to. No worries. No sweat. On that note,
though, power mic drop. James, hit it. What you
got? Well, you have to remember that AI does
not know the difference between Hitler and Mickey
Mouse. They're just different pieces of data.
So that speaks to what you're talking about.
You know, the robot going through the wall. It's
narcissistic. I'm teasing a bit, but John Gottman
Institute would tell me, no, Jackson, that's
not how narcissism works. well said it doesn't
it doesn't know and we have the opportunities
right to figure out well how do we train it and
then the things that we can't train it how do
we accept that reality in fact from my favorite
business book one of my favorite business books
dr peter jackers the effective executive effective
executives or strong tremendous leaders always
come with tremendous weaknesses Always where
there are peaks, there are valleys. And that
still applies to the AI world as well. And so
my friends, if you're looking for help with the
AI revolution, I know we talked very deep level
and very high level today. We didn't dive into
specifics, but you can always go check out overlink
.com and see what James is up to. I'm going to
continue to do that. I can't wait to dive into
the playground a little bit further and see what's
there because it is important that we protect
our brands, but it's also important that we recognize.
There's a massive wave that we can ride right
now. And I don't think there's been a better
opportunity for people to step up in life all
over the world and say, you know what, I'm going
to take full control over my destiny here. And
I'm going to change my life with this and doing
this with the best type of leaders possible who
can teach you how to surf the wave, you know,
like Kelly Slater style. Yeah, man, let's go.
So James, thanks for being here. Vision Pros,
we'll see you guys all on the next episode. Take
care, everybody. Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision
Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing your
reactions as these episodes continue to move
forward. This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.