What Every Founder Gets Wrong About Building With AI with Justin Obney

Joshua Wilson: 0:31

All right, good day everybody. Welcome to The Deal podcast. We are here in Baton Rouge in the offices of 368. Uh, Jeremy, thank you so much for welcoming your home to The Deal podcast crew to come in. This room is packed with, um, brilliance, talent, which you're gonna hear on the, uh, podcast today. Uh, you're gonna hear a few different voices in. I'm Josh, uh, your host of The Deal podcast. Your… We have the co-host, Scott Shay. Scott, say hello.

Scott Shea: 1:02

Good morning.

Joshua Wilson: 1:03

And we have Jeremy, the co-owner of 368 here in Baton Rouge. Jeremy, say hi. Hello. And then I'm gonna introduce you to a guest, and the guest is gonna bring some heat in the world of artificial intelligence. It's actually, we're talking to an AI bot today, and, uh- … we're gonna have some fun with that. But, uh, before we dive into our guest today, I just wanna say thank you to our community, thank you to our audience. Um, we sell middle market businesses, and in that, in that world, there's a lot of great stories of people who have bought, built, sold companies and who have done some amazing things. So our mission and purpose of running this program is to share these stories and pass on this wisdom, knowledge, and experience to the future generation of deal makers. So we run The Deal podcast because, one, we love deals, and then, two, is we want to inspire deal makers. And if you hear these bings, that's Jeremy playing on his phone over there. So, uh, he can't turn it off. Watch, watch malfunction. I don't know how to turn it off. He just- I'm so sorry … just throw it away. No, you're good. I'm about to chuck it. All right, so let's dive into, uh, the interview. Enough of me talking. Uh, Justin, welcome to the podcast, man.

Justin Obney: 2:17

Oh, thank you. Excited to be here. Excited to kinda chitchat and, you know, talk a little bit about what's goin' on on our side of the world. Yeah, man. So Abney is… Did I r- say it right? Yeah, Justin

Joshua Wilson: 2:29

Abney.

Justin Obney: 2:29

Yeah.

Joshua Wilson: 2:30

And it's Abney AI. Y-

Justin Obney: 2:31

we weren't super creative. I didn't consult Jeremy or his people. Honestly, when I started this thing, I didn't know what it was gonna become. I just, uh, needed somewhere to point it. Yeah. And, and so that's what we did.

Joshua Wilson: 2:44

Cool. So, uh, let's start with this. Who are you, and what

Justin Obney: 2:48

is AI? So I'm- … I'm Justin Abney. What is AI? That's, that's honestly a great place to start because what it is is confusing to everyone that you ask that question. And- We, me and my team, we are, we are, our background's in software and engineering and tech, and what we see AI as is just systems. It's just information systems that help you achieve outcomes, and everything beyond that i- is just kind of a different flavor of whatever we're trying to sell today or tomorrow. But I think a lot about my kids. I, I try to think about what am I gonna tell them AI is? And so I tell my young girls it's just a tool that helps you achieve what you're trying to do. Mm. Um, but we can go way nerdier than that. Yeah. I'll let you be the guide there 'cause I will fall off the deep end really quickly.

Joshua Wilson: 3:39

Yeah, and I think for the people listening in, I think especially for the kind of people listening in and the assumptions is, you know, let's start high level- Yeah … and then let's, let's apply it to the world of deal makers, investors, private equity, venture capital, the future, uh, allocators and CIOs, the future finance professionals. So, you know, let, let, let's start high level- Certainly … and then we'll, we'll dig into the deal makers world.

Justin Obney: 4:04

So like I said, AI is really systems that help you achieve outcomes. It's, it, as a technology it's not even really new. We've had, you know, the, the word you'll hear a lot of people talk about when you first talk about AI is just gonna be models, and we've had models for forever. We've had models that have predict- predicted what stocks are gonna do, models that have predicted what the weather is gonna do- Mm-hmm … models that have identified things in video, facial detection. These are all models, and they're technically AI, and what that really is is the application of a ton of data through some algorithms that it's been trained to identify something. Mm. We kinda… And of the past couple years there's a flavor of models that has taken the world by storm, and that would be your large language models, and that's really because they've done a lot more than just be able to give someone an answer. They've been able to bridge that gap of, of, of letting people get a lot closer to what they can do with these tools and these systems and put a lot more power in their hands. And I think at its core, that's the flavor of model that's exciting the whole world- But what they do is they will incorporate all those other models in the kinds of work that they're doing.

Scott Shea: 5:24

For sure. That's the best explanation I've ever heard. Yes. Well- That was well done. Thank you. I forgot to hit record. I've been, I've been, I've been using it a lot. I've been using it a lot and trying to figure out w- like, what really is it? Yeah. That's a great description.

Joshua Wilson: 5:39

So let's have some fun around the table. And for y- all you listeners in right now, what I want you to think about is with AI, what is an application you use AI for? But let's have some fun. It cannot be business associated, at least for this conversation. I'm gonna go to Jeremy. Jeremy, what is one thing you use AI for that is not business-related that you think is pretty cool?

Jeremy Beyt: 6:03

AI is my landscape architect, so I, I use it to constantly reimagine my yard, which is like the most suburban middle-aged thing I could possibly use it for. But, uh- … yeah, it's incredible. I, I was at my parents' house last weekend visiting with them. They have an area of their yard where they've never been able to grow grass, and it's just a mud pit, and they, they're stumped. They've been stumped my whole life. And I said… Took a picture of it, ran it through Gemini, uh, Nano Banana. Yeah. And it… I said, "L- you're a professional landscaper in South Louisiana. Landscape this area," and it did this perfect render. Yeah. And my parents' minds were blown, like just blown. And-

Justin Obney: 6:45

So I was at my father-in-law's maybe six months ago, same model. Yeah. Nano Banana is a model, a visual model that creates other visual artifacts. And they have a pool, and they have these palm trees and these old rotting boxes, and he was like, "I wanna… Give me a couple variations- Yeah … of some simple boxes we can build," the lumber and all that, and we built the box that showed up in the picture. That's

Jeremy Beyt: 7:08

it. It's amazing. Yeah. That's what… That's such a good use case for it. All right. Scott, give us

Joshua Wilson: 7:13

one.

Scott Shea: 7:13

And mine is way more immature. But I love creating just funny pictures.

Joshua Wilson: 7:19

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Describe one, PG.

Scott Shea: 7:23

They're all PG, Josh. Okay. Uh, I mean, there's hundreds of them. Just any- any time… Like, it's best to me for group text-

Joshua Wilson: 7:30

Yeah… Scott Shea: where like someone will convert that thought into an actual image, and everyone's laughing, and totally unproductive- Yeah, but fun but very creative, and it's fascinating how good it is. It is. Um- Yeah … I've also used it for what these guys talk about. What I haven't figured out is… So it probably designed like a half a million dollar backyard renovation for me, but it can't give me the money.

Justin Obney: 7:55

Yeah.

Scott Shea: 7:55

AI making money. Which maybe Ami AI can do that.

Justin Obney: 7:58

We're working on it. We are working on it, and we'll, we'll let some of you know when we achieve that. Okay.

Joshua Wilson: 8:04

All right. So, uh, Justin, when it comes to AI, talk to us about your journey into AI.

Justin Obney: 8:13

So my journey into AI, it, it started with a journey into software and in tech. Yeah. Uh, had no clue what I wanted to do in life. Worked offshore, had to get out of the house. Went to a technical college, ITI here in town, and, and found software programming, and that was, like, 17 years ago. And what I really loved about it was I had this opportunity to really orchestrate what things did and, and really kind of achieve outcomes, 'cause I could write this code that made things do stuff. And if people wanted to achieve these things, I could help walk them through that. And I spent a number of years working for a ton of companies in software. And in 2023, I was the CTO of a payment processing company, and was I ha- had my ChatGPT moment with the rest of the world. This was, um, early 2023. I was picking up my daughter from school, and you had been hearing about ChatGPT, and it was a regular day. I was like, "What did you do today?" And she was like, "Nothing." And I was like, "Cool." And she's like-… "Well, we read this book called Peter's Chair." And I pulled out my phone at a red light. Uh, okay, whatever. Um, and I was just like, "Give me some stuff to talk to my daughter about." She's in kindergarten with this thing. And before I knew it, we were talking about how Peter was upset because he was gonna have a sibling, and he thought he was gonna give away his toys, but he got to paint the toys with his dad, and that made him happy. And in my mind, I was like, we just went from, "What did you do today?""Nothing," to this conversation about how something's gonna happen in life that you think is bad, then turns out to be a great thing, all because I had this tool to bridge a communication barrier. And that was, like, my aha moment, 'cause my, my job was building or bridging barriers in technology, integrating things. And I was like, man, this is gonna be a superpower when we get to apply it to systems engineering. And that was my aha moment. I spoke at some conferences, tried to hold out as long as I could, and then had kind of like a, a moment in life that makes you, like, look at the world and go, "Okay, we're just gonna jump into something." Right. And then I decided to jump into focusing on the engineering AI aspects of life and started a company, Avni AI, in, uh, late 2024.

Joshua Wilson: 10:42

Yeah. Man, it's, it's so cool because with that, I know that Scott, when he does research on, on our guest, he'll plug in their email address, he'll plug in their contact information, and he'll say, "Get me-- Help me create some questions." And then he'll handwrite it still, but he'll write out questions. And he's so thoughtful, but he leverages AI to help him think of maybe different ways to approach guest, you know, conversations. And it's a tool that enables, you know, maybe out-of-the-box thinking or different ways of thinking. It could do it in a matter of seconds. Um, when it comes… So I, I kinda threw you under the bus, but I think you're, I think you're using the tool correctly, and I, I think that that's, like, a very wise way of using it. Yeah, I

Scott Shea: 11:26

think it's a, it's a great efficiency boost. So like I could come up with, or most people can come up with ideas, but it, it gives you ideas you may not have thought of, and like you said, extremely fast.

Justin Obney: 11:39

And it gives you momentum. Yeah. Because it, it gives you those initial steps you might not have been able to take- Correct … on your own. And just that momentum is super powerful-

Scott Shea: 11:47

Right … in achieving things. Yeah. I think there's a myth that, at least in my brief AI experience, that it does everything for you. Absolutely. Which that is couldn't be further from the truth. Like, like you said, Josh, it's a great tool, but you still have to know how to guide it and- Yeah … communicate with it and to get the outcomes you want. Um, which is probably where a lot of people get stuck. Yeah. They dive in thinking it's magic.

Joshua Wilson: 12:10

Yeah. One thing that I want us to do in this conversation, 'cause it, it'll be very easy to get into the weeds of like how to use AI, what to use AI for, and I think that's great. I'd like us to, uh, talk about the elephant in the room. And not, I'm not talking about me because I ate two chocolate cakes last night- with Jeremy, and Scott had some too. He cheated. But I'm, I'm, I'm saying like I think, high level, I think people are terrified of it. I think that there's a lot of fear in it taking jobs. I think that there's a lot of fear in the world of, uh, professional services, CPAs, right? Like I can run my financials through AI, and I'm not saying it's great, but like my financials aren't great. But I'm saying they could do the work of a lot of people. So what I'd like for our conversation here is maybe not how to use AI for right now, but how to think about AI and how can we as deal makers leverage it for good and for profitability. What are your thoughts?

Justin Obney: 13:15

No softballs here. Um- Welcome to the Deal Podcast. Yeah. So I think, I think first of all, the point of technology is to serve people, and I think like that, that is a foundation of un- that I have under all of this. And so as we, as we approach AI, it's really to make people more capable, not less necessary. And- That fear is very real. But I think that's a, a finite mentality or a finite mindset. Like, do you think it's outlandish that we may have data centers in space in your lifetime? Does that seem crazy?

Joshua Wilson: 13:58

Yeah, but it's awesome.

Justin Obney: 13:59

But, but, but you believe that's possible. Do you think we might have- It's

Joshua Wilson: 14:01

for sure possible… Justin Obney: and so when If space is real.

Justin Obney: 14:05

Exactly. And then you think about, I don't know, 100 years ago, what was it, something like 90% of people worked in agriculture, and now it's something like 2%. Yeah. And we have this reality that there's gonna be this infinitely larger problem space that we haven't even got into. And so without even getting into all the fears, just looking at those two bookmarks gives you a great perspective of like, okay, there's a million things coming that we don't know. Sure, the world is gonna change, and we're gonna have a lot of things we have to deal with societally through that change. But I, I don't, I don't think I start from a, like, a finite mens- mentality. Mm. I think I go, well, there's a, there's a ton of things that we have no clue about, and we can drill down beyond that on the fear. But, like- Yeah … that's my foundation, is the possibility space is huge.

Joshua Wilson: 14:58

I love that. And let, let's go in this. I think especially entrepreneurial thinking, um, I interviewed a guy, uh, who was at an institutional investor. Um, he, he's high up at JP, and what he said is, he says, "Fear creates opportunity," right? And he was saying it not in a way of like, let's use fear to. He's saying, no, where there is fear, there's opportunity because you can bring together marketplaces. You can bring together things. You can, you could use it in a way that is good. Well,

Justin Obney: 15:31

and the other piece is, like, AI is not human. It doesn't have desire. And one of the greatest thing about people and humans is we have this ability to take whatever we have, normalize it, and build some additional desire on top of that of what we want and then go after that. Mm-hmm. And so that desire may no longer be, like, maximal efficiency. It might be that we're desiring to operate in a way that gives us the m- the, the right level of fulfillment and time off with our family because we, you know, we don't have to lift 10,000 pounds, and we're not sad that a machine can lift 10,000 pounds, and I think it's just like a digital version of that analogy.

Joshua Wilson: 16:11

Hmm. Bro, that's cool.

Scott Shea: 16:12

Man, he's good.

Joshua Wilson: 16:13

Yeah. Hey, you've got some deep thinking. Jeremy- Jeremy said you were

Scott Shea: 16:15

gonna be a awful guest.

Jeremy Beyt: 16:17

Historically. I like to underpromise- … and overdeliver.

Joshua Wilson: 16:22

Jeremy, you wrote something down on your pad. I was, it… Are you… What, what are your thoughts, man?

Jeremy Beyt: 16:26

Yeah, I mean, God, what are my thoughts? I, what I'm interested in with this moment is- What new markets will emerge. Like go- going, talking about like this is not a zero-sum game or it's not, there's not a finite amount of possibility. It's, it keeps expanding. That's what humans do. If you think about even internet or social media, which has only recently came onto the scene, be- before social media, there was no social media economy. Now it's a massive market, right? There are companies built around it. So like I, I've always seen this as just another way that we're going to create new markets, and maybe those markets aren't technology. Like to your point, if fulfillment or quality of life becomes a more attainable metric and AI can allow people to have more time to not do the, the menial things, maybe they all start riding bikes. Maybe there's a huge industry built around bike riding that's beyond what we can imagine. That's what I'm interested in is like what new markets will be created as a result of this?

Justin Obney: 17:34

The one, I mean, where I'm most bullish is, is learning. Yeah. And that's really because like- And this is, this is a really in- like in the world the, the robots take all our jobs- Hmm what do we have left to work on but ourselves? And it's the same way that we look at sports and stuff like that to see what's possible in the physical piece. You know, why wouldn't we just like make that the endeavor of like what's possible in our sp- in our head? Not from a like we… Again, we don't have to be stronger than the machines, but we still find a lot of value about that. And that, that's where I love- Mm … I think the most, and obviously that's what got hooked with my daughters and education. My wife decided to take on homeschooling, and so we are all in on that world. Um, but I think we're gonna, I think we're gonna see a… I think there's gonna be a l- a lot of opportunity to have much more smaller niche circles. Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Beyt: 18:29

Yeah.

Justin Obney: 18:29

And, and it's gonna come down to like trust and distribution. We're not gonna get away from AI, but it's gonna be like, "Here's what this community's for. H- can we really talk about how we're using AI in this community, what it's trying to solve, and we can keep you trusting us in that world?" That's gonna be our, our distribution channel right there, is, is that story. Because I'll bring it back to the creative side. I totally believe creatives should get paid for like their, um, IP and stuff like that. But if I have two amazing artists, and I know it's AI generated, but I have an opportunity to get a song made between the two of them, one might not even be alive, and it's fulfilling to me, and no one gets hurt, and everyone's compensated, like that's amazing. Like, why, like why wouldn't I take advantage of that opportunity? And so there's a lot of stuff to solve in the economic side of it- Yeah … but there's just so many possibilities of, of what could come.

Jeremy Beyt: 19:29

I've, uh… When I'm thinking about this through the lens of the audience of deal makers and investment and, and that side of things, uh, I've heard… I don't know how, what the right language is for this, but I've heard the concept of there is an entire market that has not been addressable until now. The… And it's like the, I call it like the micro tech. It's, it's solving smaller problems that used to be, uh, infeasible, financially infeasible. You wouldn't pay an engineering team of developers to solve like- I don't know, like making cartoons for your kids with AI. But now th- these little micro markets are gonna become addressable because the technology is there, and some of those micro markets are huge. You know, like they… You, you can build entire companies or markets around smaller problems that were formerly not addressable. Does that make sense?

Justin Obney: 20:25

Yeah. I'm, I'm, I, I… I'd have to get into like what aspects of them were not addressable to kind of speak more to that.

Jeremy Beyt: 20:31

Yeah. I, I guess I, I don't have a good example, but if, um, if I'm gonna use… If I'm gonna make myself like a personal app for running our household the way we wanna run it, you know, and we have a dashboard, and all this stuff is done by Claude or AI or whatever, uh, theoretically somebody could make that a solution that they could sell to people. You know, like, "We'll make you a personalized household system." No, no one was making a startup for that in the past because the customization of it- Yeah … it just what didn't make sense. Yeah, I think the- So that makes-… Scott Shea: the cost- Yeah … barriers barriers that are, that are coming down. Like it would've cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire a software development company to build that. Just to take the risk on an idea. Now you can build a prototype for 100 bucks a month. Yeah. Now, now you can test smaller ideas- Yeah … in tech.

Justin Obney: 21:22

Yeah. It's… On the pers- I, I… You're talking to me about an area we think about as like personalized software. Yeah. And that is absolutely becoming available. I'm personally unclear, outside of like some big companies, where you monetize the personalized- Mm-hmm … aspect of it because you have low risk in the sys- in, in… if the system breaks in the personal software side. And so it… people are a lot cooler with like fragmented broken things that didn't cost them a lot of money because like if my calendar for this week messes up in my kitchen, oh well, for the most part- Right if it's something for my kids. So I don't… We're gonna have an explosion of that. I don't know how to pick those winners in that category for personal software. But- We do think about that a lot because we wanna give those characteristics to big enterprise companies. Like, we wanna enable the people in bigger companies to have all the freedom to develop and push something forward, and that we do think about a whole lot in a, in a different realm- Mm-hmm um, as far as, like, markets that are emerging and stuff.

Joshua Wilson: 22:37

Yeah. So I, I love this, this conversation and where it's heading. So it's, the conversation's going to, okay, who do we serve with this technology, right? So you said, um, technology allows you to serve people, which I think is a, a great way to frame just our purpose on this earth anyways. But, you know, one side we have the consumer. We have built to scale. Let's build something that can address my needs, but maybe 100 other people like me, or maybe 10,000 people like me. AI can give us maybe the ability to do that. Right. Maybe what I'm hearing from you, um, Justin, is… I, I get people's name wrong sometimes. I have to look down at the paper. I'm like, I named a guest the wrong the other day, so I write people's name down. It's a person. Yeah, I know. I almost got fired right then and there. But when it comes to, uh, you know, serving enterprises, you could go in and you can fix major problems that they have, integrating systems or, or, uh, integrating siloed opportunities or data that they never even knew that they had. So you're talking about serving organizations at a organizational level. Yes. Okay. So let- let's, let's stay in right now organizational. All right? Okay. And this is a lesson right here in AI. This happens to me all the time as I'm building stuff in AI. I start going, and I start building things, and it gets so far that you have to tell AI like,"Hey, act like a professional, you know, landscape architect. You're the world-class…" You tell it its identity, and then you say, "Guide me." So you give it guide rails, and it goes. So I think that as we are getting better in communicating to AI, this is a lesson for me that I'm learning. Um, I think that th- this, this is how to use AI as a tool. But let, let's do that also with this conversation. When it comes to organizational, you know, benefit, we have companies that, that you're working with and that you serve as a whole. Where could leveraging you… What do you do- Yeah … to serve them?

Justin Obney: 24:41

This is like AI transformation- Mm-hmm … for organizations is like the, the, the parent topic here. Mm-hmm. What does it mean for an organization to become an AI-enabled, AI-native? What does that transformation look like across a spectrum of their needs, their size, and their scale as well? Yeah. And where we fit into that is we focus on the engineering core of that. There are a lot of pieces around change management, helping people understand the technology, hooking up integrations, but we think all of that is, is… got a foundational level, and if you have engineering teams that can really understand your data, the principles to build these systems, and how to not just build the systems, but build it in a platform way, that enables your other subject matter experts to contribute at a much higher level than they would've been previously capable of. A great example of that is Jeremy said he can build an app. You can build an app. I can build an app. If we're in an organization and all three of us realize we can build an app, there's a lot more to maintaining that app after it's built, and who's gonna maintain that? The SMEs in software. Well, what are they gonna do if you come to them with three different things that have no coherent understanding of what they… They, they have a massive amount of work to try to pull it together. But if you have an organization that's building tools, that's handing it step by step to people and saying, "Hey, you can build this, but it's gonna land in a way that's coherent with our strategy to where we've reduced that other burden," then, like, that's where we focus. We don't try to be like a ChatGPT prompting. We try to enable organizations making that bet to really go in, all in on that bet.

Joshua Wilson: 26:33

This is, this is what EOS does for an organization. EOS does a really good job at, okay, what is our mission, vision, value, right? So if you're… You know, I see a EOS cup on our table. Scott's a fan of it. Actually, Jeremy, you are, too. Mm-hmm. You guys go through EOS, Entrepreneurial Operating System. Shout out to the boys at Firefly. Um, when it comes to, um, you know, the, this kind of, uh, framework of organization, anyone could build it, right? But if they're not marching to the same tune, what happened is it has fragmented systems, and that costs money if you have that within a, in terms- Mm-hmm. So what I hear you do really well is you come in and you say, "Cool. Build it. Fine. Let, let, let's make sure that it all works together," and then you can help system architect it so it works well and it's not pulling away. Is that what I hear? Yeah, yeah.

Justin Obney: 27:22

Fr- plainly put, from like a services perspective- All of AI is going to be software. It is software. Mm. Everything that you're seeing happening with AI has got software under it. Our background is in that world, so we build AI-enabled software. We use AI to build that software. Sometimes the software you're building has AI inside of it, and then we teach engineering teams those same principles as well. So if you have a team, we have a full course where we teach you h- we, we basically enable you with this capability to do that, but we will also develop that as well. Mm. And so that's right down to tuning models. We are very much like the engineering nerds of, of the kind of place.

Joshua Wilson: 28:08

Cool. How do you … So this is, uh There's a AA group, uh, AI Anonymous, uh, for, for people like me, Scott-… probably Jeremy, who start an AI project at, you know, 7:00 at night, and it's

like 4: 28:21

00 in the morning and we're still building stuff, and it's like, it … We, we've gotten so far into the weeds, and like life has disappeared. We ignore our kids, and you know, like, just- we forget to eat. Yeah. Forget to go to the bathroom. Like, all, all this, those things. But so, like, when it comes to, um, knowing- When it comes to knowing AI, what's a good way for us to think about it from a business owner, right? So I'm a business owner. I am not a developer. I'm learning that I can build stuff. Yeah. So what is your thoughts on that?'Cause you probably get paid a lot for people who start building stuff and break it, and then just say, "Okay- "Come fix this." … I know what I need to do. Come fix it," or, "Tell me how to do it. Show me how to do it." Well, well

Justin Obney: 29:05

we even… What you said right there is also a great picture of what these tools really do, because previously what you would've been able to give me to visualize and communicate your idea was far lower and far, far less detailed than what you can give me now. Mm-hmm. And so just by the act of what you're already doing, you're saving yourself a lot of time and money by not just saying, "This is what I think I want," but saying, "No, look at this. These three things very much show I don't have confidence in the accountability behind it, and I don't know where to take it from here, but I'm already at such a higher level than I would've started from," that like that's your first place to put your headset. Like, get in there and do something that's better than what you could have given someone a year ago.

Joshua Wilson: 29:49

Yeah. Man, that's so good. A lot of times we'll go into, you know, if I'm building something out and I go, "Hey, act like the world's leading architect or UI. This is what I'm trying to do. Kind of guide me in that." And then it creates a prototype, but then I say, "Okay, build it," and then it screws it up. But I can take that, and I can bring that to you and I say, "Build this for me."

Justin Obney: 30:06

Absolutely.

Joshua Wilson: 30:07

Man, that's cool. Jeremy, I know that… Scott, you wanna dive in? Go for it, Scott. Yeah.

Scott Shea: 30:12

You mentioned something that, that struck a chord. So to me, AI is very overwhelming in the options of tools. What is your advice to listeners? So like personal example is I've, I'm building an operating system for a company that I own. Kind of started in ChatGPT, then I kind did some in Claude Code, then I was like Claude Design at one point, and then Bolt was one I was sent to.

Justin Obney: 30:40

Yeah.

Scott Shea: 30:40

Next thing you know, you've got like 100 different tools and it's like- Fight each other … what do I do? What's your expert? I- at best advice is pick one and go with it, but what is your advice?

Justin Obney: 30:51

It… That, that is the best advice. Pick one and go with it because on the other side we use hundreds of tools because, like, they are purpose-built for little components. Right. And, and like I said, all of these things are systems that you're putting together. And from the other side of the table- It's hard to say pick one and stay with it because from a discipline and getting things done perspective, that's a, that's a great answer. From the pace of how the technology is moving and something that may be a blocker in one may not be a blocker in the other one a month later. Mm-hmm. And so kinda there's this, there's this balance between keeping your kind of finger on, like, the pulse of what's going on. But I think the other piece is get involved and talk to people about where you're hitting your head and where you're falling down, because a lot of people are doing this, and they're gonna give you a lot of perspective, and maybe they have an answer closer to the, the… where you need to play that, that gets you that direction. And at the end of the day, the other side of the spectrum is you can always come talk to me. Um- That,

Scott Shea: 32:04

that's gonna happen after this. Be careful what you wish for. Yeah. Yeah, it happens.

Joshua Wilson: 32:09

Well, let, let's talk about identity for a second. When we- when you communicate currently with AI, you say, you know, the… It's like the push/pull method. You know, you could say, "Hey, go build this for me." Or you can say, "Hey, you're a world-class landscape designer," right? So you set its identity first. I want you to think of it this way. How would you approach this landscaping problem? My parent's yard floods or this or that. Design it in a way, right? So when it comes to our identity, right, I'm a business owner, and sometimes I get so caught in the weeds of trying to build a software thing that solves a $10 problem that a $10 tool already solves, but I get so caught up in creation'cause I'm a creator, I'm an innovator. I know Scott does this, too. You, you and I had these conversations. When it comes to that, how do you know which problem to solve with AI, and how do you know which things… What should we be focusing on? Like, I think also visionaries, we have a hard time with focus. Teach us, man. No softballs here, buddy Yeah

Justin Obney: 33:22

That's a, that's a really difficult question 'cause like it depends on what your goal is. If, if If your goal is to get very, very acquainted with the landscape so that you can pull in the right people that see the same vision to run, like the expert team to go run it out, then I would say you need to stay in the exploring side for the season that you're in right now. If you have a good picture of your goals and, like, the real vision is I need to execute over the next six to nine months, then you just need to be very vigilant about not getting caught up in, in, like, the hype of AI,'cause it will pull you in constantly. Because it is… It's the most fascinating technology transformation we've ever lived through. And so you can't, like, judge it from, from that perspective of, like, when to look away. You just have to get clarity of what you're doing. And we think, like, the real word here is, is intent. And what we're really trying to do with these tools is we're trying to operationalize our intent, because that is the whole point of AI systems. It is to execute the intentions of the people that deploy them. All stop. There's no morality in that, no right or wrong. The… What it's doing is based off of the data it was built on, the int- intent you gave it, and the tools and context it has to achieve that goal. And like, like, it's all gonna come down to intentionality. And so you are the only one that can answer, like, your intent from that perspective. If it's a… If you're a CEO and it's a $10 problem, my question would be like, why are you worrying about it in the first place?

Joshua Wilson: 34:57

Well, that's… I think that happens. And why am I worried about it? Because I have a pain point or whatever, and I'm trying to get that pain away, so I create something, but then I create two pain points. I still have that $10 a month problem that I could fix, but I've also now got so far in the weeds of these things- Mm-hmm… and I have problems with my focus. That's just the reality of, of my, my human nature and my flaws. Yeah. I think

Scott Shea: 35:22

it's definitely dangerous for idea people. It is.'Cause you can move in so many directions quick- Yes at the same time.

Jeremy Beyt: 35:30

Yeah. It's infinite exploration and you can harvest- Right … you can harvest a new idea constantly. Right.

Justin Obney: 35:36

Well, I think this comes to, like, the rate of absorption. Like, that's what we're really coming up to now, is we can build so many things. What can be absorbed and what can be communicated is really now the question, because we can go far past-

Joshua Wilson: 35:55

I… Man, I love what you said earlier. I'm gonna keep coming back to some of the… Oh, block the cameras, Josh. Uh, some of the, uh, the early things that I like doing, like a Quentin Tarantino movie, is kind of bringing the things that you said in the past and pulling it back into the conversation, is, you know, you said to serve people, and that's, you know, our intent. But you said that there's gonna be… We're gonna be able to do a lot of stuff, and we're just gonna have time. And you're gonna see one thing that AI does not have, and this is something I think is gonna be the future value proposition of humanity, is for the people who know humans The people who understand human desire and have the ability to communicate with others, I think that they're gonna, they're gonna be in such a strong position'cause now anybody could build stuff. But knowing what to build and what humans want and what humans will use it for and do, I think that'll be extremely powerful.

Justin Obney: 36:47

Yeah. Absolutely. That's agency. Like, like, that's really what we're trying to give, give people.

Joshua Wilson: 36:53

What is the coolest thing that you think you've ever built?

Justin Obney: 36:58

The cool, okay, so non-business?

Joshua Wilson: 37:00

It could be business or non-business.

Justin Obney: 37:02

Um, we, we, on the business side, we're doing some really cool stuff with like- Tools to help students and advisors figure out their opportunities in life, and we pulled in, like, all, for one of our clients, all of the different two-year, four-year, apprenticeship, how Pell Grant stack, how TOPS tag. I mean, and we're building these rich tools to take kids and, like, give them a much better picture of their opportunities. And as, as someone who, like, graduated with a 30 on the ACT but a 2.2 and couldn't get TOPS and went to all that, like, because I just didn't know all that, that's, that's really awesome. The coolest experience in AI way early was… And, and this was, this was way back in the day. This was, like, when I knew this stuff was gonna be amazing. I got really big into doing Legos with my daughter and both my girls, and we would build all these Lego sets. And when AI had just come out, I was like,"Hey, let's see what this thing can do." And I started and I was like, "Okay, can you help me? Like, can you make up some Lego things I can build?" And so it was trying to tell me, I was like, "You have these blocks two by two, three by three." And I was like,"Okay." I was like, "How can I verify this?" I was like, "Can you turn those blocks into, like, some, some ASCII art?" Basically, like, some art that you write with letters and stuff- Mm-hmm … so I can maybe see the Legos visually. And so it starts drawing these pieces. We turn this into some, like, HTML. So every step of the way it had some broken pieces- For sure … but the important part was to watch the evolution of stitching these capabilities together. And I was like, "Okay, we can do that." I was like, "Well, now can you, like, help me write some, I'm a developer, some JavaScript functions that help me test whether or not the Legos are, like, valid? Like, are there any free-floating Legos that don't sit on other Legos? Like, 'cause that's impossible from, like, structural building." And I went from, like, building Legos to my, with my daughter, to how I could string these things together and, like, could I actually get some Lego set that was verified all the way at the end? This was two years ago. We didn't get all the way there, but just watching the creative process from, like, working with my daughter to these Legos, to, uh, my business, my day-to-day of building technology, and how I could bridge all that for something that I wanted to do, like, in my free time with my girls, was just a fascinating experience that'll live with me for forever.

Joshua Wilson: 39:29

The curiosity. Yeah, it's so good. Jeremy, go, go for it, man. Oh, no. I,

Jeremy Beyt: 39:33

I, I would just verify. That's super cool.

Justin Obney: 39:36

Yeah. I, I, I love finding, like, ways that are valuable to me and the family to, like… 'Cause I, I'm curious. I wanna explore these technologies. I will fall off in a hole and do that, and I know that about myself, so I'm like, how do I bridge that with the other side of myself?

Joshua Wilson: 39:53

How do I keep the bills paid? Yeah, exactly. Go for it, Scott.

Scott Shea: 39:57

All right. So you're amazing with analogies and explanations regarding AI. For sure. So good job there. Um, I heard, and you've mentioned your daughters, like- Well, 10 times now. That's obviously important to you, as it should be. Um, I heard on a podcast the other day, I think it was Diary of a CEO, which is a big podcast Yeah, shout out. Good job. He was, uh, interviewing a couple guys on, like, the mental impacts of AI, specifically with children. So what is your take on having daughters? Like, the, the analogy they used was… Well, they were talking more like potential, like, dementia and, and impacts there, but, like, social media has been proven to be extremely toxic. I feel like AI has those components, like, like it's not doom scrolling like they call it on s- social, but it's like- This is- … you can get cut up, caught up in conversation and building things 'cause it's always available Yeah, it's got an addictive c- characteristic to it Correct. What are your thoughts there?

Justin Obney: 40:55

Brains are malleable. Like your perception of reality personally is the environment that like all the moments of your life in that environment formed your perception of reality. And so like that That I have no clue on like how this is gonna affect my kids 'cause I know we're malleable people. Like we can be influenced. We are trying to tell, like, and I don't believe there's anything conscious in these tools at all. I, I see them as an amazing technology, but I, they're not people. They're not gonna like… They don't have a desire. I don't ever think that I'm gonna go to the beach and I'm gonna be like,"Oh no, the AI's at the beach and now I can't go to the be-" Right. Like I've never had that fear. You've never had that fear. Right. Because they don't have this desire. But I do know my girls are gonna grow up talking to this thing that can feel like a human and can talk back to them. And, and it's gonna be very important that we as a society and as people are very clear with how we want to, to do that as well. But there's all these massive benefits that we have to weave in there. Like when it comes to education, there's a very empowering thing to the fact that I can go down all, all these wrong paths. Like from the Legos to the Ja- like I was so okay with being wrong. There was no person there to judge me when I was wrong. And so that was so empowering in like the exploration piece. That said, if I get something right and the AI goes, "Good job," or I get something right and a mom or a teacher or something comes up and says, "Great job," and gives you a hug, th- the latter is gonna be so much more impactful on like the brain. And so like we're gonna have to find this middle ground between taking advantage of the kinds of things where it's very empowering, but keeping it pointed at people. And the only real answer in that is like the responsibility's on us as people to push that forward and to communicate that because left to our own demise, like we'll fall in love with a cartoon character on TV.

Joshua Wilson: 42:57

Mm-hmm. Here's the, here's the, here's the gentle warning is it cannot replace human interaction. And it, right now it can synthesize it, it can fake it, and I think that, I think we're gonna go through a time… Uh, Joaquin Phoenix did a, did a movie called Her or She, and it was about him falling in love essentially with a phone, his AI phone or whatever it was. Mm-hmm. I think that there's gonna be, and I, I hope it doesn't happen, but there'll be a time where, uh, we'll just be so enamored with that and that will take the place of human interaction for a little bit. But I hope that we don't go through that. And what I do hope is that we always remember… You're pulling up something?

Justin Obney: 43:37

So

Joshua Wilson: 43:38

Yeah.

Justin Obney: 43:40

So this is iMessage, right? Yeah. In my favorites there's Carl. Carl is our AI chief of staff. And so we, we've, I, we've, we've had this for a while now. I'm in like group chats with me and my wife and Carl. Why Carl? Um, I'm a simple person. Yeah. Okay? Abne AI, Carl. Like I'm here for what we're doing, not necessarily for what it's called. Yeah. Like if that gets important and gets enough like things, I'll call someone like Jeremy and we'll figure that out together. Um, but on this point-

Joshua Wilson: 44:12

Yeah

Justin Obney: 44:14

There's something also so freeing about like I just, I interact with Carl over text. My wife can text him. You can call him. And just there's a s- Yeah … switch that gets flipped that, oh, that, that becomes like way easier to use these things. I'm used to talking to people and telling them what to do. And some cool things like that is my wife will do stuff like, "Oh, hey, my parents are going on this cruise. Go find the destinations and all the really high value coffee shops and build me like a report of all the places so I can send them." And it'll go off and do that. And so There is no way we are not gonna get so close to this like, I'm doing it in the place where I text other people. That line is going to fade away. Yeah. It's going to disappear. If I wouldn't have told my wife Carl was an AI when I first did it, she wouldn't have known. And so like this is so real, we're gonna have to figure this out, but I also think one of the cool things I- that's gonna come is I'm like, "Hey Carl, Chelsea wants to go to a spa or something. Go find some times for the one she likes next week, set it up, and text me back and I'll confirm that." And like that's gonna be amazing. So not only is, are we gonna be doing that, businesses are gonna realize these proxies for us are coming to act on our behalf, and they're gonna be ac- interacting with these people-like things as well that aren't really us. And so like we have got to solve this problem 'cause it's not not gonna be here.

Joshua Wilson: 45:38

Yeah. Man, so when we talked about… This is so cool because when we talked about you can have two approaches to this, and, uh, you can have the approach of, "Hey, I'm afraid of this. Let's run from it, or let's ban it. Let's try to put government involved." You know, like, "Let, let's fight the machine." Or you can say, "Hey, how do we, how could we use this as a tool, just as a carpenter would use a hammer? How can we have more tools for what we're…" And then all of the opportunities that come with that. I could be an astronaut building DCIM centers in space. I can, you know, I can create a tool that allows AI to talk to AI as a hairstylist. I can go, "Cool, hey, create a AI thing to, you know, incoming appointments," right? So there's so much we could create, and that's where I want to inspire. What time do we got? Okay, cool. W- I want to inspire the future generation of entrepreneurs to think not through fear, but think through creativity and- Mm-hmm innovation. What can we do to serve humanity and serve others with that? And then what I want you guys to do is two things, is I want you to share your ideas with us. What are you building? I want you to reach out to Justin. His contact information will be in the show notes, and go,"Hey, this is what I'm building. This is what we're working on." Like I'd, I'd like these conversations to happen, so connect audience to our guest. Say thanks for being on the show. Their contact information will be in. Let's do this lightning round. We're gonna go around the table, and we're all gonna fi- uh, fire you, you know, with some, some questions starting with Mr. Jeremy. Question for Justin. Go. On the spot again.

Jeremy Beyt: 47:17

What are the most important skills to teach our children today?

Justin Obney: 47:22

Systems thinking and communication.

Scott Shea: 47:26

Okay. Cool. Scott, question. I didn't think you'd have an answer that quick and I'd have more time. That was good. Man, what question would I ask about AI?

Joshua Wilson: 47:37

Doesn't have to be about AI. It's anything for Justin.

Scott Shea: 47:42

What careers or industries have already been impacted the most?

Justin Obney: 47:49

Definitely software, 'cause I think, like, software is how we codify intent to execute. We're seeing law. Law is how- Mm-hmm … we codify intent for accountability. And, like, those are the two biggest places. So once we can execute, and once we can be accountable for that execution, we're gonna just see an explosion everywhere else. And the, the places that are easier to processize things, you're gonna see that the most. And I think what we'll really get into is the human pieces will be in a couple buckets. It'll be there are people that are driving the intent for the, these systems to carry out. It'll be the people that are verifying and accountable for that intent. And there'll be places where, like, the human component makes sense. Like, we, we need a human piece just for the human touch of the service we're giving. It doesn't make sense without it there. And the people in those roles, it's important that they understand that, because it's one thing to be in a position where you're doing something as part of a system and you have a choice and you're willingly participating in it, versus like, "Oh, no, you're just here. You don't understand what you're doing. We just need you in this box right here." And that's the scary part of all this. Like, how we maintain agency in all that i- is really what's important to us.

Joshua Wilson: 49:04

Human agency. You have agents that you're communicating to, and then agency to how are we gonna use this, how are we gonna think- Mm-hmm how are we gonna communicate this, and how do we direct this? Um, one of our… Go ahead, Scott. What's

Scott Shea: 49:16

up, man? What is an agent? I think everyone wants to know that.

Justin Obney: 49:21

So this is great. This is great. Um- There's a s- the, the easiest way to explain it is just to give you a, a simple spectrum. And so, like, at, at the baseline we've got ChatGPT, the ability, or a Claude, the ability to interact with a model. Mm-hmm. We're seeing the emergence of these skills. Skills is this simple thing that you can say, "When I wanna do this piece, here's a playbook and maybe some tools to do that thing." I'm still driving. I'm using a skill to do that. The graduation from that is like a workflow. It's like I'm gonna stitch a handful of things together and have some skills along the way that you're gonna do, and, like, that's a workflow in AI. And part of that workflow might not have anything to do with a model. It might be like parse this known invoice into this place and then send that to a model that says,"Does this look fraudulent? If yes, email me." An agent is,"Hey, here's some data, here's some instructions, and here's a bag of tools and an outcome. Operate until you get that outcome." And in its simplest definition, that's what an agent is. You can… Claude Code is an agent. When you tell it to build something for you, that's an agent. You're saying, "Here's a bunch of tools. Here's some things. That's my outcome." That's all you need to think of an agent for

Joshua Wilson: 50:44

Cool. One of our great joys, um, Justin, we're so grateful that you're, you're here. One of our great joys is connecting guests to guests. We do this for in-studio guests. Jeremy- I get to read it?

Jeremy Beyt: 50:57

Read our question. Yeah. Okay. So the last guest left you a question. Oh, nice.

Joshua Wilson: 51:01

And then you

Scott Shea: 51:02

get to

Joshua Wilson: 51:02

pass on one to the next.

Scott Shea: 51:03

Yeah, yeah. This, this was from Mr. Charles Hanegriff. This is from Charles Hanegriff. Okay. The voice of the Tigers. The voice of the Tigers. Hey.

Jeremy Beyt: 51:11

You have $2,000 to invest in anything as of summer 2026. Where do you put it?

Joshua Wilson: 51:18

And this is not a solicitation or, uh, financial advice. Yeah. Please consult with your tax advisor. Oh, $2,000.

Justin Obney: 51:33

Something that gives some kids some opportunity to explore, like, this creative possible space. Like, like, that's the biggest piece for me i- i- is unlocking opportunities for people that might not have had them. And, and I don't know a particular thing to do that in- Mm-hmm … um, but it would be something like that.

Scott Shea: 51:56

We all wrote that down.

Joshua Wilson: 51:58

Well, I think we all wrote that down because as you were sharing this, like, your heart- Mm-hmm … this is what we're hearing in your mission vision values is to serve and to create opportunities. So, like, I think we all resonated with that and we wanna honor you in that. Like, it's, that's pretty cool. Um, let's do this. Justin, uh, are there any questions that I should have asked you that I completely screwed up and did not ask you?

Justin Obney: 52:25

Honestly, y'all kinda killed it. Like, laying out the foundations in the beginning, obviously the agentic piece. Um- How would I know that?

Scott Shea: 52:40

What's, what's happening in AI that we haven't thought of or that people don't know is coming?

Justin Obney: 52:46

Boy, um- 'Cause it changes,

Scott Shea: 52:48

like, every day.

Justin Obney: 52:52

I would say W- what we talked about, like figuring out how we're gonna interact with these people-like things i- is probably the, the most important thing. There's is a ma- i- in my world, there's a massive side on the engineering piece where people have forgotten that just because we lowered the barrier to can deploy complex engineering, that it is still… Like, nothing about the complexity of the engineering, uh, that you're pushing out into the world has, has gone away. Right. You're still pushing out, like, complex systems- Mm-hmm … into the world. And it's the same way, like, could I hop in a fighter jet and, like, get the throttle up and maybe get it off the ground? Maybe. What am I gonna do when I'm in this jet- … and I'm not a professional, is, like, the reality that we're like, "Hold up. What's going on here?" And, and that's kind of the, the biggest realization that people need to understand, is like, we've made it way more capable, but we didn't really take away the fact that it's still a complex thing under the covers. Dude, that's

Scott Shea: 53:58

such another great analogy. That's how I feel building some of these tools, is like, I got the jet up, but now what? Isn't it amazing

Justin Obney: 54:05

that you can? Yeah.

Joshua Wilson: 54:06

Right? That's awesome. What would be really cool- So good … with the fighter jet analogy is ending this episode with, Highway to the… Go ahead, Jeremy. You have a song. Danger zone.

Justin Obney: 54:19

All right. I think we're all about the same age.

Joshua Wilson: 54:21

Yeah. Top Gun reference, guys. And everyone turn their- Uh … let's, let's throw the podcast in there. Yeah. Yeah. I want you all to go, for you, future generation, yeah, you might have seen the most recent one, Top Gun, with Tom Cruise. That's cool, and Rooster. You need to go back and watch the original. Yes. And then rock out to that music. Guys, hope you've enjoyed this podcast episode. Reach out to our guest, and we'll see you all on the next episode. Cheers, guys.