0:09 Hey guys, welcome back. You're listening to the second part of last week's episode. Let's jump back in multiple times now in your life, you know you've you moved from hard sciences into finance, into trucking, into shoes, into I, you know, I'm sure I'm missing like many different steps along the way, right, but a lot of, like you said, domain sort of shifts where you have to acquire a considerable amount of knowledge very quickly and be able to use it right? It's not like you could just rattle off facts about forklifts. You have to then use that to inform your decision making process. So as a fellow, I would count myself as a fellow nerd. I am so curious about how you manage your learning process, like when you have to learn something new, which is kind of always, do you have a process for how you go about that, how you think about it? Are you like me? Like you buy every book on Amazon and then you write for 10 years? Like, what is your process in that? Or is it? Is it less structured than that?
1:10 Sure, so I think it's evolved significantly. When I showed up at the trucking company, it was through osmosis, just working my ass off, working at like, a million hours a week, you know, and being sitting in, you know, instead of sitting in a private office with the senior executive, the way the senior executives, I sat on the floor and listened to every single trucking order coming out, and I would spend late nights at a warehouse, just walking around the warehouse, understanding what's going on. That was more an osmosis process. Now that that's that works, but it is probably less efficient and requires a lot more effort, but it was all on you at that time. Today, it's much, much more structured. So an idea scale in software, for example, there's always new technologies coming out, there's new languages, there's new frameworks, there's new best practices. You know, the big thing over the last two years has been AI copilots code, basically AI that writes code for you. For those, I kind of do two methods that I think are a lot more structured. Number one, I go take actual courses on this. So in the past month, in the past three months, I've taken four or five actual college courses on the stuff I use, Coursera, I actually, you know, I small plug for them.
They are not paying me to do this, but I take their courses. The great thing is, you can take, do, do the entire course. You don't have to, you don't have to pay a buck unless you want the certificate. And I don't, I just want the knowledge. No, yeah. So that's number one, taking structured course. And YouTube has some great things on this as well on, you know, lots of people without insanely high quality content that is incredibly, you know, valuable in many domains of life. And then the second is structured learning within the company. So when I don't understand something, just ask somebody who's an expert to explain this to me. What is going on. Why are you doing this? Link me to resources and that can apply to, you know, a lot of different things. So I have people actively teach me. And that required a certain amount of homeless to see the CEO to say, like, I don't get this. Can you teach me? And turns out a lot of people are willing to do so, and don't look down on you. You know, as their boss asking teach me how to do this, which was my, probably, in a year that I had earlier in my career,
3:10 I think find that, if anything, it's the opposite, right? Like, people are, like, overjoyed that somebody actually cares enough about what they do to learn about it, right? Particularly if you're, like, ostensibly higher in the hierarchy, that can mean a lot to people. So I think that's super cool. Okay, so I am curious about you guys and AI particularly. And I'm sure every time you do a show like this, people are like, What about AI? I don't know how you like, I love AI tools. I think they're super cool. The technology is amazing. Like many people, I went through like a thing where I was like, Oh my God, and then they were sort of coming down on the other end. I'm like, okay, like, I've seen my 5,000,000th like, mid chat. GBT, response to a question that I wanted a little bit more depth on. But for someone who really has to, I imagine, adapt your business to AI in order to either attract users or attract, you know, if you ever attract investment or whatever, right? There's a million reasons why you probably have to deal with that technology in a really tangible way. What do you see as its impact on idea scale, particularly, right? Like idea scale is the core of it is people giving their ideas, because the people are on the ground connected to reality in a way that I can't be, but I'm sure AI can help them in a lot of ways. I don't know. How do you think through that problem and think through leading your company through such a weird technological transition? I
4:34 think there's two broad ways that it has affected us. Number one, like many companies of in any industry, it's affected our internal operations, and we've been aggressive adopters of this. How do we do or write our marketing content? Are our engineers co piloting with actual AI agents now? So internally operating, nothing related to the product. We've just been aggressive adopters, and we started adopting it kind of within weeks of this stuff coming out, because we saw the potential revolutionary impact. Fact, one just funny. You know, impact of it was with point one FTEs, in social media, we had four times the social media growth of all of our peers combined, just because we were using AI effectively, very real, whereas they all had, you know, dedicated social media marketing teams, and we had point one FTS, you know, doing it. So we were aggressive adopters internally in our operations, and that's allowed us to become more efficient, more quick, etc. Secondly is how it affects our software. And like many software companies, we've tried to be thoughtful about, how do we incorporate AI? Some companies just added a.ai to their domain name and said we're an AI company and rebranded. We didn't go that path. We, you know, for better or worse, we chose like, how do we actually use it? And there's three elements, one of which we there's three ways we've affected our product number one, which we released last year, was all the AI does is helps you sound smarter.
So it's still a human idea. It just words. It better makes you sound and, you know, the the the internal phrase we use is it gets rid of stage fright. People are afraid of sounding stupid because they're not speaking in, you know, polysyllabic words, or writing in polysy words, just makes it sound fancy. So that was kind of the the version point one, which just solved the very simple, like stage fright problem that really affects people when they write. The two more powerful ways that we're using AI are coming out in about a month or so. Number one is the AI. Our AI tool will allow people to qualitatively assess ideas. So if you imagine you have a, you know, a morass, a giant pile of ideas, good, bad. There's a voting system. There's some algorithms putting up and up and down. But what if you can actually figure out, hey, which ideas are good for my organization and which are easy to do? Because that's the, that's the goal, right? That's, that's the Goldilocks scenario, something easy to do and something that has a lot of benefit for you. So that's number one, the AI tool, analytics tool, and this will be coming out in January. So we'll just qualitatively analyzes all your data in a way that was not possible pre AI. The second actually goes to kind of the heart of your question about human creativity. We are launching an AI co pilot that helps generate ideas. And it generates ideas kind of like it generates original ideas. And it does this in two ways. Number one is it tries to understand your organization's goals. So you know, NASA's goals are going to be different than the City of Burlington, than Pfizer's. So it tries to understand your not even your organization's goals. You could be on the marketing team in Pfizer, and it'll help understand your specific goals, and it'll come up with ideas how to achieve them. And then secondly, it permutes Human ideas. So creativity, in some way, you can think of it.
One academic definition of creativity is it is a combination of other things you've heard before. Nobody invents something out of Scratch. It's like other stuff they've heard before, and you just combine it in different ways. And so our AI, that's the second thing that the AI tool does, which is permutes existing ideas contributed by human beings or itself. Actually, it can become very meta. It takes all the stuff that's there and comes up with something unique that's a combination of it, again, aligned with your organization goal. And so that's also coming out in January. We're pretty excited about that, because it is truly like an AI now contributing ideas that are both augmenting human creativity but also permuting it in really unique ways.
8:13 I think that's super cool, because I do think that like the space that AI is moving into, but it kind of isn't there yet for most people is, this is an AI that knows all about me particularly, right? And it's really and we're starting to just see that and like, you know, it's like anything. It's like the nerds are, they've been building that stuff for the last year. But for most consumer stuff, it's not quite that, right? And I think that's such a cool idea, because the more it understands about my processes, my business, the more the those ideas are actually going to be pertinent to me, rather than just being, hey, here's like, an average of all the things that people might say in this instance. So all right, well, let me ask you a very particular question then about idea scale and how people might use it. And I'll, I'll, this is, I always say this. This is the portion of the podcast where Dan pretends to ask a general question. It's really a question about me and my life, and I'm gonna just pretend that it's for the audience is really for me. So, like I mentioned, I worked with agency owners, and I am sort of not alone, but I have been very vocal about the fact that I think our industry is in crisis, and it's kind of a quiet crisis, because the systems that we rely on. So for example, you're doing online marketing, you're you know, you're doing Tiktok, you're Tiktok social media, you're doing Google ads, or whatever it is. Increasingly, what it is is I do stuff that stuff goes into a black box of algorithmic void, and then something comes out the other end. But I have zero control over that black box. I don't know what the inputs are that matter there include, there's an increasingly large amount of difference between cause and effect, and that means that, like I view the agency's role, which is.
To sort of protect the client's money and to make good use of it as becoming increasingly difficult. So I have been very vocal about we need to move to this model of essentially trial and error, but trial and error informed by a very rigorous set of understandings about how data works, how volatility variability works. Things like the work of W Edwards Deming is statistical process control and like, apply it to what we do, so that when we think, we say we know something works, we really, really know it works. We're not just pretending we know it works. Now, part of this has been okay, but I don't know what works. I have to test a million different things, and I can't come up with everything by myself, right? It's exhausting, right? So what are some ways that, for example, agencies might use IDEA scale to try to navigate through this period in their industry where, hey, we're not exactly sure what's working anymore. We're not exactly sure, like, where the real value added activities that we're doing are, and we need to innovate some kind of model for the future, how would we use IDEA scale? Or how could I get my clients to use ideas scale to attack that problem? And that's a big question, I understand, but yeah, so you solve my problems a big deal.
11:15 There's at least three different problems that you pointed out. Let me see if I can address or at least this is like your one is what is called abstraction. Second is ideation, and third is statistical analyzes. Okay, abstraction is the idea that we are all growing further and further away from like the base principles, like, how many people? If you look back at the 1970s the people writing code knew how a computer processed code. It's called machine code with zeros and ones. 99.9% of software engineers working, you know, professional engineers working in Google and so on, could not write a piece of machine code in zeros and ones to save their lives, right? And that is because between machine code, there's one language, there's higher orders of language, right? 30 years ago, my dad could repair a car because, like, it still was like actually a machine. Today, my dad, or me, for that matter, can't, because there's a machine, there's a computer, there's a control panel, and then there's AI there. It's called abstraction, where we are further and further away. And each level that abstraction, there's a specialist that sits there. That's a problem I can't solve. I'm not going to attempt to. That's a universal problem that's happening that we are all getting further away from what the hell works, or understanding it, and that we need eight levels of specialist. Number two is this notion of, okay, let's figure out new things to try. And that is where ideas scale can certainly help out you and all of your kind of agency, customers, clients, competitors, can get together to, like, share ideas on a platform like idea scale. Again, you could use, you could use, you know, if you really wanted, you could use Excel spreadsheet. We're quite a bit fanci than that. Go use our free version, less than 100 users, and entirely free to share ideas on what is worth trying, and then to rank ideas which are worth trying. That's something where you guys can actively use our software. Number three is actually going to statistically test out whether those ideas work, and that, unfortunately, is where you have to kind of apply something in the real world and run what's called an experiment.
I'm sure you guys have removed a B test, right? Just, you know, run an experiment of some sort. That part of the problem becomes much more about statistical analysis, and you need to use, you know, some sort of statistical software or marketing software, whether that be a piece of code written in R or Python, if you depending on how nerdy you guys want to get into, like a marketing basically marketing analytics software that exists, or general purpose analytics software. But we can again help in that middle part where we help you come up with ideas on how to, at least, if you can't solve abstraction, at least figure out what works, even if you don't, if you can't figure out the exact causal pathway that it works, because Statistics does do that. Well, it lets you figure out what works for that, figuring out why it works, which is, okay, well, thank you for solving my universal problem. Yeah, I think you did a pretty good job, considering I put you on the spot, and I do want to hit this point. You mentioned this in passing, but we won't say this again. So we've been talking about idea scale, and you're like, oh, and NASA used this and the post office, but this is if you have less than 100 users on the platform, it's totally free to use. Is that correct? Correct? So our customers tend to be huge organizations, both private and public sector, but our software is completely free. There's no strings attached whatsoever. If you are a team less than 100 people, and that could be a single entrepreneur with a Gmail address, or a team of 99 people at a multi billion dollar corporation. Our software is completely free, literally. Just go to ideascale.com click get started, free. Sign in with whatever you know, email or Gmail that you want. It takes 30 seconds to be a sign up. It's as easy as signing up for Tiktok or Instagram. All right,
14:38 so I love this so much, and I'm really curious, what was the thought process behind that model of saying, Hey, we're free up to a certain point. Is this, like, part of the sort of broader mission of the company? Is it just you guys determine, like, the high end is where we make all the money? Like, kind of, what's, what was the reasoning behind that? Because it's such a cool model. And I. It's like, exciting, because for someone like me, like my team is a team of eight, right? And we have the same problems that you're talking about NASA having, except, you know, we're not trying to land on the moon or whatever, but you know, our own problems are hard in our world. So it's like, super exciting to me that, like, hey, we get to go try this out, we get to use it, we get to see what it's like. So what was the thought process there? Sure. So it's, it's
15:21 funny that this was one of my big initiatives when I joined a CEO that I said, we're gonna just offer free, you know, not a free trial, but, like, free software. And in fact, there was a lot of initial pushback, like, Hey, if you're giving away for free, who's gonna pay for it? I'm like, Yeah, we don't chart. You know, no customer with 50 people or 10 people can afford our software, so we're not losing anything by giving it away for free. The idea so I initially got a lot of pushback implementing this initiative, but kind of pushed it through. It was one of the rare situations where I said, I'm CEO, we're just doing this, right? I think there's one since that just we're doing this because I'm the boss. There's three thinking. There's three purposes behind why we give the software away for free. One is our mission. We want to be the innovation platform for the world, and we want to support global innovation. If we really believe that, then we have to be willing to support it in all its forms. And we understand not everybody can afford an enterprise piece of software, right, both based on size of organizations. There's people in parts of the world where, like, they can't afford it, and we get that. So that's number one. It aligns with our true mission. We want to support innovation around the world. Number two is that, look, eventually it is a good marketing exercise where somebody hits that 100 user limit, or they go to another organization, they remember, hey, these guys did me a fit solid back when I was at a smaller organization. We were smaller, maybe I should give them a call. And number three is we get better by half, the more people use our software, those people then come and say, idea scale, you should fix this, or here's a new feature you can build. They come to we actually use our own software. And so our customers come to us all the time and say, and through our own software suggests, here's an idea for a new feature you should build, or something that's broken and you need to fix it. Not broken, but like could be better. And so we benefit. The more people use our software, the better we get our software, because they're giving us feedback constantly. That's
17:04 so cool, man. And I, like you said, it is. It's such a common thing for companies. I think, I think SaaS companies are actually worse than average on this. But I could be wrong, but like to have, like, a really amazing vision statement, like we are here to help the world, but they don't, their their actions don't necessarily back up what would be the logical sort of and conclusion of that vision, right? And I think, for IDEA scale, what's so neat is, like you said, innovation, not always, but often comes from the bottom up, right? It comes from the people on the ground. And so supporting smaller businesses with, like, you said, enterprise level software, such a cool move. I mean, it's a no brainer to just recommend it to anybody and just saying, like, hey. And in fact, the first thing I thought of when I was first looking at this, I was like, Oh, I'm gonna, like, open up an anonymous thing just for me and my personal life, and my friends can, like, send me, like, Dude, you need to change your clothing or whatever. Like, you know what? I mean, you need to shave more often, and they'll vote it up. Like, it's kind of exciting to me. I think that's super cool. Okay, so Nick Jane, this has been so awesome. We've mentioned it multiple times, but if anybody's missed it, it's ideas scale.com. You can go there. You can check it out right now. Yeah, right there in the back. Yeah, go there. Sign up. It's free under 100 users. Super cool for people who want to know a little bit more about you. Is there anywhere else that you want them to find you online? Or should they just go to idea scale? Anywhere else you want them to look you up?
18:34 Yeah, two ways. Number one, if you actually want to get in touch with me, best way is through LinkedIn. My name is Nick Jane. I respond to 100% messages. So DM me. Alternatively, I'm just screwing around with HTML, or, like, writing raw HTML from scratch with AI. So my personal website, which is literally it looks super ugly. It's Nick jane.com it is intentionally super ugly because I'm building it entirely by myself, with no designers and raw code. I love that that's like the old days, like a black screen with code. It is to kind of a so, I mean, the website looks a little better with black screen code. But like, you know, typical websites are designed with all sorts of fancy tools and stuff. I'm designing a black screen with code just to prove that I can, because I haven't done this in like 15 years, so it's fun.
19:19 You have to bring back the under construction, like, animated GIF, you know? Or like the guy, like, digging the thing, yes, I remember that from my GeoCities. That's what I'm talking about. That's, see, I love that, because that's it's like, bring that back. That's the era I want back. You know what I mean? Like, bring that back. I love that so much. All right, so, yeah, go ahead. One last thing, the the under construction like, the reason it doesn't exist is we replaced it with a 404 error that's standardized. Now, is there the 404 was not standardized back then? No, it's much more depressing. You got to have a little guy and just says, Look, sign my guest book. This is like a whole thing we need to bring back, okay? But Nick Jane, dude, thank you so much for being here. Man, I learned so much from you. This was such a pleasure. Thank you so much for giving us part of your time. I really, truly appreciate it. Thank you for having me on, Dan. It's been an honor.
20:09 All right, that's gonna do it for this week's episode. I hope you enjoyed the conversation. I definitely did. I got so much out of talking to Nick, particularly when we were talking about abstraction, when I asked that question about agencies and this kind of issue of the black box, this thing I've been calling the black box problem, Nick very correctly pointed out, and he mentioned this to me when we stopped recording, this is a problem that has been talked about, written about, for a very long time, just under the label of technological abstraction. And even though I knew that intellectually, I had not made the connection, and he really clarified things for me. And let me tell you, folks, that is why I do this show. That is why I write the blog, which, of course, you can find at better questions.co. There are so many things we can know or things we've come across or read or heard, but we haven't yet made the connection between those things and these other things that we know, maybe on a deeper and more profound level. And when you have the sensation of those connections being made, of things sort of coming together and forming a full picture in a way that they hadn't before, it is a truly incredible feeling. It really is, and I'm deeply grateful to Nick for his conversation with me, and super happy to explore using ideas scale with my own clients. So as always, you can find my writing over at better questions dot CEO, where I share the best of what I've learned, whatever I'm reading, whatever I'm interested in. Go check it out over there. And thank you so much for giving me your time every week. I really appreciate it. I appreciate everybody leaving reviews and comments on the podcast that read every single one, and I will talk to you again next week. Hope you're having a good one. You.
