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Certain skills that were really valuable 10 or 20 years ago are totally useless like spelling
I spent you know and when I was in school we learned how to spell and write prayer paragraphs
That's not super useful or even tired. They're both right like there's two special things that only human beings have been able to do for all
Of a human kind for all of human history number one. We've been the only ones to create meaningful relationship with each other, right?
We have not you know, no matter how much people love their you know
Their animals it's never been quite the same as having a husband a wife a daughter a parent that relationship
That's number one and number two
Yeah
Welcome journeys to another episode of the Thravo journey today our guests is Nick Jane now Nick is a CEO of idea scale
I'm leading innovation software company
Idea scale is the core of many leading global organization in the innovation efforts including NASA
Comcast NASCAR Dostard with without borders and many others
Nick graduated at the top of this class from Harvard Business School and holds a degree in mathematics from Dartmouth
Let's just get on with the conversation and
Nick welcome to the Thravo journey. How are you? I'm doing great. Thank you so much L. Michael for having me on really excited to be here
Yeah, I'm excited to have you
You know as you know, we have guests that come on and you know
I do my research and find out a little bit about them before actually, you know, we get on the podcast and you have a very interesting story
Which I'm really interested to get into so just to kind of go back
Before we you know get to the present day
You talk about
Your how you were raised and you were raised by your grandmother in a small city in India
What was that like and and what was growing up with your grandmother? How did that?
Shape your life your life. Sure. So it influenced me in a couple of ways number one
I actually didn't meet my parents till I was over five and then they raised me after five
So the meeting is like I'm you know was grew up very close to my grandmother because from age zero to five
She was the only you know adult I knew
So deep relationship with her. She's since you know, she passed away a few years ago
But right up until her death. She lived with us super close to her. She influenced
much of how I think about life
A second is you know when I grew up in this kind of tier two or tier three city in India in the early 1990s
And that's fundamentally a very different life than you would imagine either that that you get in the United States or Canada
Or developed country today, but also very different than you would get in India today. I remember as a kid
Electricity would go off randomly in the middle of the day when you're watching TV
We had running water for two hours a day one hour in the morning one hour at night
And even as a three or four year old it was my job to go fill the water tank downstairs
So when water is running go fill in the tanks that you had inside everyone had inside their house because then you had no water for 12 hours
So and that was level responsibility. I had at age three and just you know fundamentally
Infrastructure was different roads were less good and what that's meant is throughout my life
Kind of the notion that hey life is difficult or there's a challenge
It's okay. Hey if I can live with running water for two, you know for two hours a day
I can probably run you live with almost anything else I encounter in my adult life living here now in the US I
could imagine
Like when you as a child that actually gave you some kind of outlook on what life is or could be
Growing up like
When you come up with kind of when you come up against issues or you know problems
That childhood may have influenced who you became to came to be these days
What
Go ahead and talk about what that what that done has done for you
I think
And I want to be very careful
I'm about to say because there are still hundreds of millions of people around the world who don't have access to even what I did growing up
Right, so I don't want to start by acknowledging them
But I think
The way or its influence means a lot of challenges that we run into living in the Western world
in developed countries are really, you know
Rounding errors in the grand scheme of what humanity goes through right?
So whenever I encounter challenges in life. Hey, the how you know heat broke or the basement flooded or it's a tough day at work
It's still a rounding error in the grand scheme of things, right?
I've encountered greater challenges
I'm more cognizant that people around the world encounter much greater challenges than even I've ever encountered and
They make make it through it. So
It gives me I guess more resilience more perspective on what resilience actually is
Yeah, I can I could imagine I mean not even imagine I could actually
Understand that because growing up, you know as I grew up
I mean we've always faith we face challenges, right and we just know we learn how to overcome them and they
Somehow they become the tap tapestry of who we are as adults and you know beings. Yeah
Did you ever imagine like growing up in India that you know one day that you would be leading global?
transformations in in in different industries
No, I I've been very weird kind of you know, there's that joke of living life one day at a time
It sounds really funny, but at least my personal life or as well as my professional life
I'm not too worried about
You know what's gonna happen five years from now or 20 years from now when they asked me when I was like five years old
What I wanted to be when I grew up. I had no idea like I'm not one of those kids who said hey
I want to be a CEO or I want to be a fireman or I want to be a nurse like I just you know was a kid and that's kind of
That's still the same mentality I have today
Look, there are things that I want to accomplish my professional life and my personal life
And I want ideas to be able to continue to grow and be successful
But I'm not thinking ahead of like oh, I want to run a billion dollar company or a hundred billion dollar company in ten years
That's that's not part of the plan the plan is to do everything right day by day
that sounds to me like just being present and
Who you are today and just just living in that?
Yeah
So you went from India you came over here to the United States
What was that journey from India to the United States? How's that?
I actually moved to Canada, which is where I can yeah
And I came here for college when I was around came to the US for college when I was 18
I think there's a really funny story that so you know in all my memory. I'd only grown up in India at age 5
I'm ready to start kindergarten my parents bring me back to Canada
And there's like a really funny memory that kind of shows you how unaware I was as a five-year-old
Or maybe all five-year-olds are this unaware as we're driving back from the airport near Vancouver
Canada to my parents home in a farm town near Vancouver
I see the sign for a store called Wendy's with this, you know red-headed girl there and preschool
I was intending in India was called Wendy's and so I point to I remember distinctly pointing out on the on the ride back
From the airport. Hey, is that where I'm going to be going to school now pointing to Wendy's obviously the fast-food chain
Because it look very kid-friendly, right? That's great advertising on their part, but also shows you how naive I was
You know, maybe still am as a five-year-old
But yeah, like it was you know as a kid you just take things in stride while you're living it, you know in
India or you know or Canada or the United States
It's it's that's all the only life you know
You don't know that I'm not straight that hey
There's you know billionaires out there living in air-conditioned apartments not something you're aware of and as I think a lot of children
Especially if they're raised by loving and caring families are just you know
They live they are living a very comfortable protected world. Yeah, and I was one of them
Yeah, I have you know, I have nephew great nephews rather that you know, they all they spent a lot of time with me and
I just I just see through their eyes how the world is and everything for them is perfect
You know what I mean and they're they're taking care of but to them, you know
Uncle Mike is you know this the superstar and it's so funny because you know, that's not the life I live but you know to them
That's who they are. So I just you know being five-year-old
You know, it's just it's just who you are and just loving life, which is really great
And so you were in Canada you're in Canada
You went you came to school here and you started in Dartmouth or do you start in Harvard?
I went to Dartmouth for undergrad and then at Harvard for business school
Harvard is a okay. Harvard is pretty cool school from what I understand
What do you to go to those schools?
Sure, so Dartmouth was very easy
It's obviously a good school and they offered me a bunch of money
My parents are both blue collar workers
My father was a janitor and so when a good school says hey, we're gonna give you like 75 and off
You kind of say yes, right? The other 25% was still pretty expensive
But my parents, you know had saved up, you know, every they've done the typical immigrant thing
They'd saved up every dollars to give me a better chance at life
And so Dartmouth just gave me you know 75% 80% scholarship and that made it a lot easy to say yet very easy to say yes
Going to Harvard was look kind of two or three things number one
It's Harvard. It's nice to have that on your resume
When you're a poor kid from somewhere else like going to a place like that opens a lot of doors that may not otherwise be open
Second I met a lot of really interesting people an interesting can mean like famous rich
But also just interesting people who've done cool things. I met
One of things like I think HBS does really well is they have folks from military backgrounds folks from nonprofit backgrounds folks from
Scientific backgrounds, so I made friends and developed relationships with people who from other walks of life that I'd never encountered at least in my professional career
And as I said it opened a lot of doors that may not have been open for me. Otherwise, I could imagine I could imagine
What do you have a trumps and transformative moment?
Why why you're in Harvard?
I don't know if I'm trying to give you a thoughtful answer rather than a flip it answer
And I don't appreciate that not from Harvard. I can probably point to some things from college
But I don't think business school is a transformative experience per se. Well, let's just talk about just because we're in that era
And just building up just so people can know you we're building up here
What is a transformative moment or can you recall or transform transformative moment in that era in your college college years?
sure so
transformative moment to me is one that makes you realize you had a
Misconception about the world. Mm-hmm. Okay
Something that you just assume to be true like gravity an apple falls from a tree and you realize wait gravity may not always work that way in other parts
The universe that's a bad example gravity does work everywhere the same
But it's like something you've believed to be so true down to your soul and you realize it's not and
Yeah, and I had one it kind of in my educational background. So I darkmouth is a pretty good school. There's again, you know some
It's an Ivy League school. There's a lot of smart people a lot of rich people there all that fun stuff and I you know when I showed up
In my high school career I had been I went to a small farm town school
Not a lot not some fancy prep school not some elite magnet school just normal middle-class town, right?
Like most folks there were blue collar employees
Our most folks parents there were blue collar workers when I showed up at Dartmouth. I you know, I had been very fortunate
I've been a good student. I'd gotten a good education. I just assumed that hey now I'm at this great school
Everyone has had the fortune of having such a great experience and such a great education and the kind of transformative experience or eye-opening
experience ahead there was like no turns out that a lot of you know
High schools around the United States actually really suck
And these include some extremely well funded ones elite ones like prep school ones where people are dropping $40,000 a year
but also a lot of you know
Reg just regular public school systems in the United States suck and made me realize how fortunate I was
Get to get the education I'd gotten because Canada tends to have a very well-funded
good rigorous education system and the implication was like
It was eye-opening to realize how different the qualities of education are across different schools
But be the lot of the school of the skills that I had taken for granted that hey
I had learned how to do this math thing or I had read books from other countries
And again despite going to a normal middle-class school
Made me realize that a lot of assumptions about the skills that I was have that I assumed people had developed were incorrect
And that's something that's been very relevant through throughout my career because you know sitting here CEO
I just assumed that somebody may have learned this skill, but that's not true
Right, somebody may not have learned how to do a marketing ROI analysis because their marketing boss had not taught it to them
Or somebody may not you know
somebody may be a software engineer and they may not have actually looked at how an algorithm works or how to write machine code or
You know somebody may be an artist
They may not actually have studied how why public because I became famous and those are assumptions about how educational and skills journeys
I assume what to be true are not necessarily true, right?
Wow, okay. That's that's good. So you're in this you know in this era you go through these trends over the moments
What led you into
With the next space in your life and was that when you started work for Bayne Capital and Greenlight?
Sure, so after kind of during my educational career between college business school and afterwards I worked in finance
Really fun area learned a lot to your very early in your career. You're getting to work with some extraordinarily talented people
You get you know, I was at 22. I was in the same room as CEOs
I wasn't you know presenting to CEOs, but I got to be in the same room and learn from them
Yeah, and that's such an extraordinary experience, especially early in your career when you get to be around extraordinary senior and successful people
What I do today now is a bit different I'm a professional CEO
So either private equity firms venture firms or founders hire me to take companies to their next
To their next level of success
And that kind of happened more by coincidence anything else one day
I got a call saying Nick. Hey, do you want to come look over on a hundred million dollar revenue trucking company?
And that's obviously a once-in-a-lifetime phone call that you get. I said yes after thinking about it
And that's how following the career path that I'm in now, which is kind of really cool, right?
I am on my third company now. I am helping grow idea scale into a billion dollar global organization
That's that's a fun journey to be on
Yeah, you you have a lot going on for you
in the different, you know
different areas that you've been been in and
Now that you're in idea scale and you talk a lot about innovation
What is innovation to you?
Innovation is a process for discovering and doing new things and that can be you know new products
It can be new workout routines. It can be
New sports that we develop is that process by which you arrive at new things and new ways of doing things
mm-hmm
now
These are ideas and you talk about idea meritocracy. I was reading
something about it and it's basically
They were talking about I can't find it right now, but they were
Is the power of idea meritocracy and how it's really changing in a lot of companies
What's happening and what's the shift now
That's happening in companies. So let's look back to kind of old ways of doing things
So historically if you look at most organizations, there's so many organizations operate this way is there's two ways
Ideas get heard number one. They're said by the boss
So when the CEO says something it could be the dumbest idea in the world but people listen because he or she's the CEO
Or that you know the managing director or whatever
So that's a method one where whoever's the most senior their voice their ideas get heard and their ideas get done
Even if they're bad ideas the second way is whoever speaks the loudest
So if someone is really popular or they're really charismatic or they're an extrovert
They're much more likely to say their ideas promote their ideas make their ideas go viral than someone who's let's say an introvert
And again, so that's not necessarily the best idea winning. That's the loudest idea winning
There's an increasing shift as companies become less hierarchical and more results oriented that look
We don't care we want to separate the quality of an idea
From the seniority or loudness of the person
So if some if a quiet junior person has a great idea, we should listen to them
If it's the CEO is a great idea if it's someone in Japan
We should listen to them because we want the best ideas because they become the best products or best
Services that we can deliver to our customers or to our constituents
So the notion of an idea meritocracy is shifting from doing just whatever the boss says
To a world where the best ideas get done no matter where they come from whether they come from somebody who looks different than you
Somebody speaks the funny accent somebody who's junior we want the best ideas in our organization or any organization
To happen not just the loudest ideas
That's what you bring to the organizations. That's that's our that's what our software company
That's what our software does our software is kind of think of it like it's a social media platform for ideas
So in tick-tock everyone submits their you know crazy cat videos or dance videos a lot of the videos on tick-tock
Suck but guess what because the voting systems the algorithms the best
Videos the ones that are most eye-catching them
But the best they float to the top go viral across the world our software does that except with making the best ideas go viral
You only do that for large companies or who do you do that for is that like evens? It's like
You know singular person LCS or these large companies
So our customers tend to be large organizations Comcast Pfizer US post office, right?
Be these big this big media organizations that have lots of people
But not a good way to get all those people's ideas together in one place and sort through them now the good news
It that's where paying customers are the good news is our our founders mission was we want to support innovation
So as part of that we actually give our software away completely free for
Team for or teams or organizations less than a hundred people
So if you are one person if you're L Michael
You can just use our software entirely online totally for free by yourself or with your team of up to a hundred people
Not gonna be a hundred people at Samsung if you want it right like a billion dollar company
So yes our clients tend to be big organizations because they find it most useful
However, we intentionally give our software away to support innovation amongst smaller organizations or individuals. Why do you do that?
Two reasons number one is what our mission is our mission very clearly is we want to support innovation around the world
Right and if we really believe that and it's not just buzzwords or corporate hype
You kind of got to be willing to support for people who can't afford that enterprise great software
Right if we believe in what we do we have to be willing to kind of take that extra step number two
Is it's obviously a good marketing avenue?
Well, where eventually look your team may be 99 people today when your company becomes a thousand
You know person company or five thousand billion dollar company
We want you to remember that we were there for you when you were a small and to remember that we were there to support that
Innovation that led to your success. We'd like you to come back to us then
Got that
Do you why not what?
I'm looking at the present and we talked about a little bit before versus the past and let's talk about generational
I guess generational spaces you're what are you are you millennial gen X?
Born in the late 80s, I don't know which generation that makes so maybe millennial or something like that. Okay, well
I'm a gen I think gen X maybe gen X or something
So when we talk about no innovation and all these things that are changing
Do you find where people are older people?
That you may have come come in contact with that they're
Afraid of the change or they have some hesitancy about the change or using idea scale
Not I don't think about using ideas here. We've made our software kind of I like to use the word stupid simple to use if you can open up
Instagram or Facebook, right? You should be able to use our software because it's at the end of the day
It's a it's a social network. We can post a fine, you know a video of your dog to Facebook
You can use our software because basically works very similarly
So we don't face a resistance to using our software based on how old someone is or which country they sit in because it's designed to be
You know very social. That's what we focus very hard on
Innovation as a general concept is sometimes more difficult for people who are you know more calcified in their ways or more habituated in their ways, right?
And that often comes with age. That's okay, right?
Like, you know, my my parents who just who've retired over the last decade or so they're less interested in trying out
You know the newest AI tool they my mom, you know, I introduce my mom to chat you tea in Gemini
And she likes to chill use it a bit, but is she going to make it a part of her daily routine less so right then somebody who is 22 they are a more open to change
But be they I think a lot of you know, 22 year olds entering the workforce realize that if they don't adopt these AI tools
They're going to be you know, they're not going to be employed in 10 or 20 years because it's become such a core part of
The skills that you need to be a productive member of the workforce these days. So going back to your question
It's our software doesn't meet resistance based on generational or race or gender or anything like that because it's actually designed to be super easy to use
But the general notions of innovation are often
Sometimes innovation is easier with younger workforces, but that's not necessarily true. There's some, you know, there's a lot of companies that have, you know, 1560 year olds only that actually are reasonably innovative because they have that mentality and culture to succeed.
How do you cultivate your workforces?
How do you cultivate innovation within a within an organization?
Sure, I think you there what I call the three legged stool of innovation. You need three things. Number one, you actually need people who want to innovate not in some ways as an eight character. Some people just want to show up nine to five and do the same thing over and over.
Other people want to try new things. So you need that people have that spirit of innovation or experimentation. Number two, you need to create the right innovation.
Number two, you need to create the right incentives to innovate. And a lot of organizations actually really suck at this because at many organizations, if you try something and fail, you get slapped or you get demoted or you get laughed at right.
And if you try something and succeed, your boss, your company steals your idea and they make a billion dollars off of it.
So that's called a perverse incentive where they're actually saying, don't try anything new because if you fail and f up, we're going to blame you. And if you succeed, we're going to take your idea. That's the exact opposite of what you want.
So you want to create a positive incentive. And the third is right the right tools and technology, which is obviously where idea scale comes in, where if you if you let's imagine you've got the right people, you've been given the right incentives, and then you send them into a dark room by themselves and say, go innovate.
That would be crazy, right? That would be like telling an athlete, go, you know, a world class runner, go run, but we're not going to give you a pair of shoes. So a lot of companies also, you know, struggle with this.
They've hired the right people. They've given a lot of thought to giving the right incentives. And then we say, and then they say, go be creative or go be innovative. That's often not a great thing to do because it's akin to letting telling our athlete go run without shoes.
Yeah, that probably wouldn't work well.
I mean, it can some athletes, you know, train barefooted but you know when they go out and run their races, right? I sometimes I'm a runner I'll sometimes run barefoot on the track just to stretch different muscles.
But it's you know, it'll tear up my feet if I do that for too long.
Yeah, so I'm a sprinter. I've sprinted, you know, for many years, not now, you know, older and a little more just more pain in different areas, right?
But yeah, I see what you're saying. And is it crucial for like business leaders to especially in tech to really just have a solid understanding of innovation and where we're headed to in the future as far as AI and things like that.
Sure. So I don't want to, I'm going to be careful and not speak for the entire technology industry because you know, there's very few leaders who have that capability to do that.
What I will say for myself, I run a software company and I believe it is super important for me to stay abreast of all the innovations.
So I spend 20, 30 hours every single month explicitly trying to learn new skills and new technologies that are out there. So last month or sorry, two months ago I took courses on prompt engineering so I could learn how to use chat team T and Gemini and these
AI tools like a pro last month I personally built a couple of tools in code myself just to show like, hey, it works. This month I'm trying some commercial tools for AI selling for AI marketing.
So it is really important. I would say it's really important for technology leaders to continue to learn about new technologies because there's always new technologies coming out that could either help your business or disrupt your business.
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All right, we're doing the spot. Let's get back to the podcast. Yeah.
There's, there's a lot of, you know, word, you know, just not a lot of stuff happening right. Right.
I just saw, it was a, not that I was looking for it, but I found it and I saw it. I was saw a commercial. That was a commercial or something with Kim Kardashian and she had this robot.
And she was teaching this robot to do things and, you know, I think it was a little kiss or something like that.
What role is that going to be playing in people's lives as we move forward? What do you think?
So robot companions have been an idea for a long time. If you've ever read like Asimov's iRobot series where humans started inventing this, this is an old book series from the 1960s.
Right.
Robin Williams actually did a movie off it called Millennium Man and then a 2000s. We are now, you know, one of the first things once chat between things came out was people started inventing AI chatbots, AI, sorry, girlfriend, boyfriend chatbots for people because people are lonely.
They wanted somebody who chats and empathizes with them. So what I would say is the genies out of the bottle. We are going to have social robots or social AIs as part of our lives.
And those could be, you know, those could be our future boyfriends and girlfriends. They could be our nannies that are teaching our children.
That sounds weird to me.
I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but I'm saying it's out of the, this is a real product. There are a hundred million dollar companies out there that make chatbots that are people that act as people's boyfriends or girlfriends or they're to, you know, you can use them as tutors.
I used an AI recent to teach me how to do a weird function in databases that I was trying to deal with.
So these AIs are increasing going to play a part, a social part in our lives. And that social part could be very extreme where, you know, somebody could go marry a robot in 20 or 30 years.
I don't know. I think it's very possible once we figure out the legal system for that.
But in the more intermediate term, they're going to, they're already, you know, acting as people's surrogate boyfriends or girlfriends. They are acting as tutors and teachers and nannies.
And once we give the, once we start putting AIs into robots, they could very easily be our, you know, if you've ever seen the Jetsons, the Jetson nanny, right?
They could be our pets. There was, I was in Japan about six months ago and there was these little, very cute but dumb robot AI pets that a woman who was working with there, she'd bought this because she was allergic to dogs and cats, but she had this little cute robotic dog and pat, dog, sorry, dog pet.
That was very kind of cool.
It is cool. And I have nothing against it at all. I was actually talking to, I can't remember, but I was talking about the Jetsons at one point and I remember that it was an episode where, I forgot her name.
Rosie, I think it was Rosie, was it?
Not Rosie, not the, not the robot, but the wife of the Jetsons.
Jane, I don't even know.
George Jetson, his wife, Jane, is a Jane Jetson?
Jane Jetson. And so he went to the song. I got it.
Yeah, exactly.
And she was actually like, the TV came down where she can actually talk like we're talking.
She wasn't all made up. So she put a mask on so that it make her look like she was, you know, she was all ready to go. And, you know, the screen came down and now she's, you know, talking, you know, on that screen.
But the point is that back then, I think it was maybe in the 90s or something, then we're now actually kind of living that life presently, such like as iRobot and, you know, there's a couple of different movies that I'm thinking about.
I can't remember the name, where they had the girlfriend robot, you know, where there was just talking through some kind of telephone that they had the girlfriend and the boyfriend robot.
And it's just like, you know, our imitating life life and telling you are imitating art. And that's just seems like this where we're going.
It's very interesting to me that we're still, I mean, it seems like it's always is already out there. We're just now catching up to it.
What would you, what would you say if there's a bad downside to it? What would you say that downside is?
I think there's two downsides that are going that are going to happen in some ways unavoidable. Number one is we're taking, we're sorry, they're both, there's two special things that only human beings have been able to do for all of human, for all of human history.
Number one, we've been the only ones to create meaningful relationship with each other, right? We have not, you know, no matter how much people love their, you know, their animals, it's never been quite the same as having a husband, a wife, a daughter, a parent, that relationship.
That's number one. And number two is human beings have been the only thinking machines in history, right? You can have, you know, once upon a time we used to plow our own farms, and then we realized oxen could do it, and then we realized tractors could do it, and then we realized, you know, automated robotic tractors can do it, right?
But it was still a human being making the decision or thinking. These two things were, so these two special roles that human beings have had, we alone have had emotions, or not emotions, we alone have had meaningful relationships with other humans.
And number two, we've been the only, we've been the thinkers. Those were our two special superpowers as a species that no, you know, monkeys don't have that, rocks don't have it, oxen don't.
Those two superpowers are no longer going to be special in the world of AI. So that's special place we've had in the universe is no longer going to be special. And that kind of results in a very
philosophical or existential crisis for us. We're no longer special. And how will we deal with that as a species? I don't know, but it's something we're going to have to deal with in a really rough way over the next couple of decades.
What kind of education you think humans should have when it comes to this, this new world that that's, you know, it's creeping up on us.
I say three things that are changing versus traditional education systems. Number one, certain skills that were really valuable 10 or 20 years ago are totally useless like spelling.
I spent, you know, and when I was in school, we learned how to spell and write prayer paragraphs. That's not super useful or even type, right? Like, if you ever remember Mavis beacon or those typing things so you could type 100 words a minute.
That's not super useful because now you can talk to a robot at 150 words a minute, and it'll transcribe everything for you. So a lot of skills that we had learned historically spelling writing are going to be less valuable.
That's number one. Number two is certain other skills are going to be much more valuable such as understanding how to interact with these AI tools or with these robots understanding what they're good at and what they're bad at.
Like, almost anybody can talk to chat chip T today, but the average person using chat chip T or Gemini or any of these LMS doesn't understand what the limitations of these tools are where they break down where they're wrong.
What, you know, what the tech, what the engineers call the hallucinations of the LMS.
And number three is that probably new skills and so number. So the second was learning how to work with these AIs. And number three is there's probably going to be new skills that I can't even sit here imagining today that are going to be needed in 10 years.
Like, if we just look back at the clock five years ago, no one thought that there was a skill, this magical skill called prompt engineering that would emerge. But now, if you want to work with an AI, you better be really good at prompt engineering.
And that was a skill that didn't even exist five years ago, right? It would be like typing wasn't a skill 100 years ago. And, you know, by the 1990s, if you didn't know how to type, you couldn't work in an office.
Yeah, it's true. And, you know, everything is changing. And I think it's just for someone like me who, you know, always like tech, but not, you know, super, you know, thorough and understanding what goes on behind it.
And at this point, I imagine I just use it for people. What's your advice for people that are like me, that, you know, feel behind, need to catch up, know that all these stuff is all these things are changing.
And really kind of just want to feel like we're, we're present to what's happening.
Sure. So firstly, the fact that you're feel that you're openly acknowledging that you are, you know, feeling like you're falling behind, that's the first step, right? Like the first step to a problem is recognizing that you have a problem or challenge.
The second is the good news is you're nowhere near as far behind as you think because 99% of humanity is in the same boat. They use these tools without understanding what these tools are, why they work, right?
And the third is because you're not particularly far behind, it's actually really easy to go learn about them. Like what I would recommend if you care about LMS is Coursera, which is online for university has a couple of great courses on LMS.
And there's two or three that you that are really powerful. One is there's a, there's one on how the actual code works. If you are really interested in the math and the code, that's, it's called deep learning by Andrew Ang.
If you don't care about how the code and engineering works, and you just want to know how you can better interact with it without knowing any of the math behind it. There's a course from Vanderbilt University offered on Coursera called prompt engineering.
And it just tells you how do you better talk with the robot where where does they the robot breakdown without getting into any of the math. It's entirely it's a course that like a 10 year old could use, but personally made me like 10x better using it these AI tools.
So I encourage you and the great thing is you can go learn it and let over a weekend like these courses are 10 hours long. So they're not, you know, college, they're not college level like, you know, 100 hours deep notes and things like that.
Well, the Andrew Ang one is, but that's if you want to go learn the hardcore math.
Most people, most people probably would not, but it's okay.
Right.
I have my job right. You probably don't as part of your job.
Yeah, but it's good to know that those things are out there because I mean, you just never know when those issues may come up where you need the education to, you know, further your mind and this new tech world.
One thing on that and the thing I would emphasize is all these this education that's out there is free right at 20 years ago you'd have to pay somebody a lot of money or go to a fancy university if you wanted to go learn about ML.
There were maybe like 10 universities in the world and they were all super expensive today. You can go watch for YouTube video go to these free online universities and get access to that education for free.
And that's incredibly empowered.
That is that is what is the future for idea scale.
Sure. So idea scale, I think is going through three transformations at the same time.
Historically, we were very much like a one product North America focused company, three transformations that are happening are number one.
About a year ago we started expanding globally we added people in Mexico, South Africa, Japan, Europe. And so we're trying to make our software much more accessible through people in the world we just won the national government of one of
the world of Esquitini, right, which is a small country in Africa. So we're starting to really expand and have a global presence and make a global impact in how come countries even are innovating which is kind of cool.
Number two, we're adding more products so historically, we were, you know, we had this, our core solution is an idea management solution or an idea social network, we're adding a whole bunch of other products that help people innovate so we recently launched and are about to
create a whiteboarding solution. So you can do anything you can on a piece of paper except you can do it digitally.
As well as in about six weeks or so, we're launching this AI tool that basically takes all of your data and understands it for you. That's really cool it doesn't analyze it for you it understands it for you.
We're launching this kind of these other products that will help our customers innovate faster more effectively and come up with better ideas and get those ideas done.
And then thirdly, is we are trying to make a greater impact of the organizations we already serve we historically entered or worked with the innovation departments or R&D departments of many companies, but we realized, look, that's that's only a small part of
innovation. Innovation doesn't just happen in the innovation department doesn't just happen in the R&D department.
If you work on a factory floor, people are innovating how to make that factory floor more efficient or more safe or more clean. We want to be there and we want to make an impact there so we're also expanding into the areas of businesses and organizations we serve.
That's a bright future. You guys have a lot of stuff happening and ideas scale and you're the CEO of ideas scale and I get to tell from you know this conversation that we had that you know you you always seem like you always have ideas and things.
I should because that's that's that's you know, it's what we do if I didn't if I didn't live and breathe our valve of what we do then I'd be a pretty terrible CEO.
And I was going to say that you are a great representative of your business and your company so you know, there it is you know when people look at you and talk to your listen to this podcast or see the podcast, you know, they get a great example of what the
business is all about through who you are.
And going, you know you've you've accomplished so much. And I know that you wrote down here that I know you like to play poker, right. So, if you could go back and play poker with your younger self.
What advice would you give him.
Okay, I would give two piece of advice. And I'm a pretty competitive poker player right I'm trying to make my way to be good enough to play the world series and actually you know have a shot at winning.
So, I'm not good at, I'm not there yet I'm probably like five or 10 years.
I'm actually going to be on that stage is one enough money where I like I consistently win right I could already go and pay for my own ticket there it's just like I'm going to go and lose I'll make it to day two or day three, but I'm going to get killed by the pros and I don't want to wait
waste a lot of money.
You can probably be something.
I'm going to have a shot. So, I would say I would give two piece of advice on poker to my younger self. Number one, understand that a lot of poker players are don't actually understand how the game works. Most of them are a lot of people about 90% people are playing poker or just truly the gamble.
They don't understand what good decisions are versus bad decisions. I incorrectly throughout most of my poker until actually last weekend, literally assumed that most people had this terrible assumption that people understood how the game worked.
And turns out most people, they know what the hand rankings are they know that flush beats the straight but that's about it.
And number two is understand the fear motivation so whenever people are gambling yes there's greed there's adrenaline, but there's fear. And one thing you have to do really well and in poker is understand how fear plays into the dynamics of the game.
And one thing I you know I certainly am not even I'm not even great at that today, but I'm certainly better than I was at it like four or five years ago and so I would love to teach my younger self like how to understand and take advantage of fear as a mechanic of the game.
Okay, you got a deep there for you ask me for I will if I've got five minutes with my younger self I've you know built a time machine travel back. I'm not going to waste his or my younger self's time with like, Hey, have this Wendy's Berger and said the McDonald's burger
and I'm going to give him life advice that's going to help him.
It was good I was leading to that. I mean that's good because you know a lot of people probably wouldn't think that, but being the person that you are, you know, that's a great conversation that you know you should have with your with your you could have with your younger self.
Um, other conversations was really has been really great and you've shown me and really taught me some things throughout this conversation and one is you know, life is going to change right and there's ways that we can educate ourselves continually with the changing environment with you know,
the innovation of who we are as people in our businesses and innovation of the business itself, and also with the whole tech world and how AI is changing and how it's changing our lives.
And there's, you know, there's something to be said about you know, being educated, you know and not living in the past, but being the president and flowing into the future and being educated about all that.
What advice as as your last words, what advice would you give someone just last words advice a story what would you say to someone.
Two pieces of advice I'll give to number one go get some fresh air the world outside is awesome and it raises you know there's also the hormonal reasons for why fresh air and sunlight make it such a big difference to people's lives we spend way too much time inside.
Number two is throughout your career whatever you do in life, you know, go in that and go just learn new skills right. It doesn't matter whether you're CEO whether you're a junior analyst whether you're a janitor whether you're a line worker to factory teacher go learn a new skill.
It will make you smarter, make you happier and make you more proud of who you are so you being and that'll lend more meaning to your life.
I love that. I love that. Nick, how does how does one get in touch with you from the from the business owners from once in 99 and 99 and 99 people and up. How do they get in touch with you.
So two ways number one our website is ideas skill calm you can see the spelling behind me. If you want to use our software it's as I said it's completely free there's a get started free button at the top.
Start it takes 30 seconds to sign up it's all online so no no downloads required, and you'll be up and running in like 15 to 20 seconds. It's pretty awesome.
Number two if you want to get in touch with me personally the best way is through LinkedIn. My name is Nick Jane it's you know down at the bottom of the screen there.
DM me I respond to 100% of messages on LinkedIn so feel free to DM me.
Nick, I want to thank you for being on the podcast. Thank you for your time. And you've been you've been amazing. And for all your listeners and watches, make sure that you connect with us on Facebook or Instagram at the thrive journey.
As we always say, make thriving your new name normal. And I will see you on the next episode. Thank you. Thank you.