Discussion: Leveraging AI for Business Growth on the Business After Hours Podcast

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Transcript:

welcome to the business after hours where the ties loosen the souit relax and we talk Business Without The

Boardroom grab your favorite drink kick back and let's dive into the world of

business after hours all right everybody welcome back

to the business after hours podcast join here with Jared and Danny how yall doing today you know it's it's hump day right

no yes yes it is thank you for the reminder yeah how are you doing Danny I'm good

thanks I appreciate you guys having me here I'm looking forward to a chat AB absolutely our pleasure well tell us a

little bit about yourself Danny sure uh I run a company called Apollo 21 that I

tell people sits at the intersection of a management consultancy and a product design studio so we work with uh mid to

Enterprise size organizations to help them uh think through and establish their innovation practices build new

products launch new Ventures and occasionally we work with folks to create bespoke technology that solves

operational problems oh wow all right on a more dummy level for us what uh what

exactly did you say I run a company that builds

technology products and helps other companies build new companies awesome cool so how does how does one find you

like like do what do you do to to get clients I guess uh uh most of our clients come through referral and Word

of Mouth right now we are working very hard on uh expanding our top of funnel

and figuring out uh how to kind of tap into a larger market so if I I had a

better answer for you I would give it to you but at the moment we are very much in figuring that out mode no that's okay

yeah I mean we're we're the same here um so definitely understand that I was

looking at your website looks like you've worked with some pretty big names Bank of America

yeah we did some work for Bank of America helping them Envision how AI might impact their customer service uh

across their applications and we've worked with a bunch of other interesting folks across uh remote guarding and

security and a couple other financial services companies we've done some work in the sports space we've worked with

restaurant companies so there's a a pretty good mix that that we've had our hands in are you are you mostly like

focused on AI uh not necessarily by choice but yes

um you know most of our clients are thinking about asking about trying to figure out how to make AI work for them

and so um it comes up in conversation a lot and we talk to our clients about of

AI preparedness and whether their data isn't a place to support AI efforts and

we also work with them to establish more simplified Automation and things as we are working towards what their AI future

might look like so you know there's a lot that can be solved with simple carefully thought out and planned if

this happens then go do that type of automations and so um we tend to start

there as we are helping our customers figure out kind of what needs to happen with their data so the question I have

about AI um we we reach some small businesses mainly um and obviously

sometimes with small businesses either we're apprehensive to AI obviously right now because the the unknown

uh lack of knowledge about AI so we're scared of it all all AI is not going anywhere right no no

it's not I mean so it feels like to me it's one of those things where like you either embrace it or you get left behind

yeah I think that that's spoton without question um you know the big question for for folks these days is how are they

going to integrate it and how are they going to do that securely because most of what we talk about with AI these days

um you know people are thinking about um the the sort of General models that are

accessible by consumers so your open AI chat GPT um you know Gemini things like

that that uh you really don't have a clear picture of what's happening in the background so any data that you put

there just assume that it is going anywhere that it might and so um one of

the things to think about and one of the things that we talk to a lot of clients about is um how do you make use of AI

today so that you understand what its capabilities are how you might be able to make it work for you but how do you

do so in a manner that doesn't expose data that you don't want expose to third parties things of that sort and so you

know for anybody particularly small business owners or folks who are hearing a lot about Ai and looking around going

well you know I probably need to understand this but I just don't know where to start uh go sign up for chat

GPT is honestly the easiest answer start playing with it but think twice about everything that you put in because every

time you upload a data set to open aai for example you lose control over that data

and you don't know exactly what's going to happen so before you start you know adding pii or customer data or anything

like that into chat GPT just play with it and you know start asking it questions learning what it can do

understanding how it can help you in your day-to-day and that's enough to give most people a flavor of where AI

might take us to start getting the gears rolling around huh all right interesting what can I do

here who is AI for what like what kind of businesses is AI really

for uh I think that AI is going to impact just about every business and

it's you know if you're looking at the at the corporate behemoths AI is going to become integral to operations and to

the way that just about everything unfolds within business and you know know the larger companies are the ones

that have the um wherewithal and the uh the finances frankly necessary to train

their own models so that they can utilize their own data without worrying about where that data is going whereas

smaller companies I think are going to tap into AI in much the way that I've just described you know how do I how do

I use the off-the-shelf tools in ways that make my life easier so that I can

focus more on my business more on growth Maybe know save a higher or AE or something like that so lots of

opportunities especially as we think about geni with um impact on marketing

and places to look for simple Automation and things like that that can help make

the day-to-day easier so I think that's kind of where we're headed now do you

think uh AI will take over jobs or you know you know impact employment uh it

definitely will I mean there's no two ways about it you know people who um people who do the things that you

know we're teaching geni to do are going to run into a point where um gen is good

enough that they're gonna have to contend with it and you know we're already seeing stories I just read an

interesting article about I want to say it was the BBC that over the course of

like two years effectively rolled off the majority of their editorial staff and was left with one person whose sole

job was to edit chat GPT output and you know that person of course was bored out

of their skull and you know felt like their job had changed in a way that they um hadn't necessarily signed up for so I

think that we're just seeing the beginning of how AI is going to impact jobs but at the same time it's also going to shift jobs into other places

and force us to rethink um what those jobs are meant for so if you're an

editor are you creating and editing or you just editing outputs for example so

job descriptions will change now do you um know of any and a a training for like

AI for people that are getting started um like where they can go and kind of learn and and be able to start

understanding AI um I don't have a specific course or uh resource to point

at but I know that there are many of them that are cropping up um I honestly

you know Google what's the best way to do blank with AI and you'll find probably plenty of resources lots of

YouTube videos things like that um the other thing is just start playing with it you know the in my mind the best way

to learn any new technology is just to try it out and uh think about where you

can try to force the limits of it so um you know I'm making stuff up here but if

you're a baker and you want to you know figure out how uh AI is going to impact

your baking business go Force AI to try and create interesting recipes for you

or come up with you know whatever the next pastry is and you know who knows maybe we can credit AI with uh the next

Cronut but um you know the best thing to do is try it out and see what happens

I've definitely seen some good like AI songs um come out there's some there's

been some real Randy Travis come out with an AI song yes yes because he couldn't sing anymore and that was his

sort of for back into the world of of being able to create music I was like well there goes the music industry now

cuz that's all you got to do is just have ai do it and you yeah let's get through a few more lawsuits though and

see what happens I thought that was crazy it sounded just like it too yeah well and

that's the other interesting thing is you know it's not just music but we're going to start seeing you know AI content being mixed into TV and movies

and things like that and you're starting to see um lots of actors for example who are licensing their likeness and their

voice for the use in for use in AI so that they can effectively live on after

they're gone I guess that's awesome see new actors in

it sounds like we just make them up you know right yeah and I you know when you start

dreaming about what the future of AI particularly in entertainment looks like you get into some really interesting

territory around um what exactly is I don't know a movie or a TV show and how

can that be um personalized to the viewer for example so um you know is

does the the uh look of the hero or heroine change on a per viwer basis to

match whatever they think that hero might look like for example and you know these things are not far off from being

possible where the version of a movie that you watch and the version of the same movie that I watch might not be

exactly the same thing right there's there's a lot exciting stuff that can begin to grow out of that also I'm sure

books too right you know like being able to write a whole whole book with through AI yeah absolutely um you know and

thinking about where that might impact anything from fanfiction to the

continuation of favorite series you know uh uh George R Martin's taking forever

to get the next book out uh what happens if somebody or something else writes it

for him you know there's there's lots of interesting possibilities there and having a you know having an AI

hallucinate the the future of um you know the world of Game of Thrones would

be a really interesting kind of game to play out and see where it goes now are you able to like um I don't want to say

fact check but like verify that it's an AI like is there a way that somebody can be like you know no this is AI or that's

not AI uh I think it depends on what it is that you're you're looking at the the

reality is at least as far as I've seen um things like you know AI um writing

Checkers and things like that are not particularly good at their jobs uh I saw something recently where somebody put

like the Declaration of Independence through one of those and it said oh yeah 98% this was written by AI I'm sure and

so can't yeah exactly like no I don't think AI was around when they wrote that

one maybe maybe the alens you know r that technology down there you go they

let borrow for a little while and then took it back yeah yeah you're not

worthy but your your business is primarily focused on like helping other businesses Venture into other businesses

yes so uh we focus on a couple of things you know I you'll hear me talk a lot

about Innovation as as I talk about what we do because a lot of companies today are highly focused on Innovation they

talk a lot about Innovation and the reality is that if you look deeply at what most companies who are claiming to

be Innovative do much of it is for lack of better terms theater it is things

that look and sound like they are Innovation focused but when you look under the hood and figure out how are

their operations aligned to their um goals in terms of innovation what you'll

often find is that there is not a whole lot of alignment there and um a lot of

what we do is helping our customers understand what that means why that

happens what metrics they're looking at today is compared to what metrics would be better measures of um Innovative

activities things like that and so we help those companies think through what it means to be Innovative how those

practices can help their organization create new products that either align to

what they do today but take it a step further or a step outside of whoever their current target market is so that

they can grow into new markets and New Opportunities or looking at um whether

those products even fit Under the Umbrella of the company today and if they don't what it might mean to focus

on building that as a separate Venture and whether that means spinning it out into a separate company that you know

functions adjacent to but not connected to the parent company or whether it becomes a new business unit or whether

their Innovation and growth efforts can be fostered primarily through partnership and investment for example

so there's lots of ways that that we help companies think through what scale

and growth means through the lens of innovation for their business and it

comes to life in a bunch of different ways right so what does that look like when a

company uh like at what phase would a company need to would would you recommend a company contacting you like

what phase in their business model um we we see companies coming to us generally

at either a growth stage where they have established product Market fit through a

technology stack that they've cobbled together or that was just good enough to get them off the ground and they're now

looking around going oh God if we're going to scale our current operations can't support uh that growth without

either a change in technology or hiring a lot of people to offset the additional

lift that growth will will require the other type of company that we end up working with quite often are those who

have found product Market fit and are well established in what they do and have hit kind of a moment of slowdown so

you know okay we've been doing this for 10 years or 20 years whatever it is and we're now realizing that um our growth

rate is slowing while we have product Market fit we've started to um kind of tap out our our existing market and they

hit this point of realization where they start to understand that um in order to maintain the company and to build launch

longevity they need to look beyond what they've been doing today and that's where we come in and help assess where

those opportunities are or if they have a stack of ideas and opportunities in front of them we can help evaluate and

determine which of those um fit their target market which of them are viable

which are feasible and which align to the capabilities of the company today so that um as I like to say they have

license to publish that thing and I don't necessarily mean publish in terms of writing but just in terms of what

they're putting out into the world and how it aligns to what people think of their business today so you know for

example if uh if Coca-Cola launched a chocolate bar tomorrow we'd all probably look at it and go really like why I

don't get it um and so you know that's what I mean by license to publish yeah

well Coca-Cola we all know wouldn't create a candy bar they would just buy a candy bar company and that's a fair

point but it is fair point but it's also aligning exactly to to what I'm talking

about I mean you know if you look at I just to run with the example if you look at Coca-Cola and they wanted to get into

the candy Market they're gonna go through an evaluation process where they go okay well we could go hire a team of

I don't know chocolateers whatever and create the Coca-Cola candy bar and try and brand that does that fit are people

going to trust us for releasing a candy bar or are we better off just going and buying you know some small upand

cominging candy company and that is a form of growth for Coca-Cola as a as an

organization even though it's not necessarily aligning directly to their brand and so those are the types of

decision-making processes that we we talk often with our clients about in terms of build versus buy what aligns to

the offering things of that sort so what have what have been kind of some of your biggest struggles with uh your business

and and that um one of the biggest things for us

is helping people understand what we do and finding the customers that align to

to that need I mean I mentioned earlier you know growth and sales for for us have been primarily through referral and

word of mouth and we're at a point where um we are focused very highly on figuring out how to move Beyond just

referral and Word of Mouth opportunities and into uh something that creates a more steady funnel for us uh so you know

for as much as I talk about doing this for other companies it's the the old shoes saying where uh you know it's hard

to do for yourself when you're this close to whatever it is you're working on well we know a company called Apollo

21 if you need to hire somebody to help you awesome awesome I will uh I'll have to look them up and see what they

do um now can you can you expand a little bit more on like like technology

and what you're looking for for certain technology uh I'm happy to can you be

more specific or what um yeah so talk about scaling um with technology and and

you're looking for like techn or you build stuff um for their clients what's

some of that stuff that you you focus on gotcha um so we build generally what we

build is bespoke for every client need and so to give you a couple of concrete examples um we worked with a small

Financial Services organization that came to us and basically said hey we're drowning an email and we can't figure

out how to get past that can you help and so we came in and the the kind of

consultat side of what we do is the evaluation of okay you've told us you're drowning an email but why are you

drowning an email what's happening what does the process look like today who's emailing whom and you know why are there

so many Etc and what we found out in that particular case was that their entire process was email if you need

something email someone if you need something else email that person and so of course they're drowning an email and

that's not exactly surprising and so we worked with them to uh evaluate and

understand what the top three processes were that took up the majority of their time and attention and then we built

literally built from scratch a piece of operational technology that supported the processes as they wanted them to

unfold within the business and so as I said this was a financial services Oregon they were managing transactions

and cash movement for uh ultra wealthy folks basically and so uh Quest would

come in a thousand a day something like that it was anything from um hey here's

my cell phone bill pay it out of my account to hey I'm buying this company I

need you to go work out the purchase and get all the paperwork done whatever and so we built a platform that understood

who had access to which clients at what level each of the individuals sat within the organization so that uh that system

could manage you know okay Danny's a Junior nobody on this team he can enter information and submit a request but

then because Danny's a junior nobody that request has to go to somebody else for approval and then somebody else for

transfer and get checked by the client etc etc and so we we built out

Technology based guard rails that basically forced them to go through that process as they defined it but then also

automated as much of that process is possible and so we cut their email

volume by something like 90% % through the creation of this platform and moved all of the um Communications around

their workflow into that singular platform where comments and thoughts and questions could be attached to specific

requests so that somebody could say you know rather than emailing going hey that bill for Joe's AT&T invoice you know did

you see it I had a question whatever all of that can just be tracked right next to the invoice

itself now now is there a certain industry that you like don't like to work with uh we're pretty industry

agnostic we where we really focus is on solving the problem and helping create

something new so whether it is that operational platform or uh we built a

mobile app for another client that was designed to be um effectively ESPN for Rodeo um really it depends on who's

coming to us and what the interesting opportunities are there more than you know hey we really want to work on

financial services or whatever it is um all that being said Healthcare is really really hard because very highly

regulated yes absolutely I'm so a company calls you um and wants

wants to to get you on board to hire so I'm assuming like a team kind of comes in initially does an initial consult and

then from there does your team kind of take over yeah so generally our engagements

start with a discovery period um loosely speaking it's generally about four weeks

and it's our opportunity to ask a ton of questions learn about that client's

business interview internal stakeholders potentially interview external customers

um we might go so far as to running some workshops and things during that period

to begin ideating around solutions to a problem just so that we can begin to Define exactly what it is they're asking

for because I you know what we find and I this sort of aligns to the example of helper J an email um the questions that

clients come to us with often aren't exactly aligned to the underlying need

or problem that they're trying to express they just haven't either taken the time or don't have the wherewithal

to to really think through step by step to kind of go oh well we're drowning an email because every time somebody needs

something they email somebody etc etc and so all of that we cover during that Discovery process and then moving

forward out of that um generally we go down one of a couple of paths if

somebody is very clear on what they want built and we've had the opportunity to evaluate that and prototype it and get

some early user feedback for example during Discovery then we might just scope out a build phase for creating

whatever that piece of technology is that they need um but if they're looking for an opportunity to create a new

product or a new Venture and don't exactly know what that is then we rely very heavily on a process called lean

customer development which is effectively interviewing customers

starting with sort of a a wide view of hey what are the pain points that you have what are the problems that you're

encountering and which of those might align to our meaning our client's business so that we can come up with a

solution and over the course of that effort we will start wide and then begin to narrow in and articulate Solutions

usually in something that looks almost like a comic strip you know think of like a a

4frame uh story or storyboard of hey you said you have this problem here's the

definition of that uh here's a possible solution and here's the outcome that you would get from it how does that resonate

for you tell us what you think is that something that you would be interested in using does it fit into your daily life would you be willing to pay for it

one of the most important questions and um we really like going through that

process because it mitigates a ton of risk at the back end when you go to start building something so you know the

Trap that a lot of companies startups or otherwise run into is that they hear a

problem they have an idea they have a problem you know of their own and they have an idea for how to solve it but if

you don't go through that customer development process and really understand whether you just think it's

cool or whether other people find Value in it that's where you end up in that um

we've built a solution looking for a problem spot where you spend money you put put the

team together you spend you know anywhere from two to however many months building a thing and you go to launch it

expecting that you know if you build it they will come and everybody's going to come beating down your door when in

reality that just doesn't work and so if you go through the customer development

process generally what we see is you spend more time up front but you save so

much time on the back end by not building the other features that you were absolutely convinced that you

needed but then that you heard 72 times that nobody really wants so you end up

building a very finely tuned thing that you put out in the world and you can get it built faster you can ensure that it

covers off on your customer need you have heard from people that they're willing to pay for it and in really good

circumstances you will actually have a line of people who are basically banging on your door going guys when can I have

that when can I have it is it launched yet I'd like to to use it I want to share it and so you've already lined up

your first customers before you've ever written a line of code or pushed a pixel or released anything and that's a great

position to be inck yeah so now um when you're going through that process are

you primarily doing this like remotely or are you actually going into business um and you know watching how they do

everything uh it varies and it depends a bit on the customer we um we love to get

in a room with customers and work face to face a great way to build that relationship but uh Apollo 21 as a

company operates fully remotely and so we have gotten I'd like to think pretty good at uh working in that manner and

you know getting what we need from our customers and partners and from their customers Etc so that we can learn uh

remotely if necessary and I frankly it doesn't make a huge difference to US

unless there's something that we really need to see in action you know if it's a it's a manufacturing problem and we need

to see how something is manufactured for example it's hard to do that remotely but beyond that if we're just talking to

people then it doesn't matter quite as much what's your

background uh long twisted and a bit of a roller coaster I started my career in

advertising uh way back in the day I spent I don't know a year and a half or

so doing that and realized very quickly that I didn't enjoy it um and so I

basically made a personal point of getting myself out of the world of advertising and so I started applying to

a ton of jobs and long story short ended up working at an innovation consultancy here in New York uh called poke and um

spent about five years there building out uh their product and creative practices and that introduced me to the

world of startups and Entrepreneurship and technology and I've been hooked ever since so I've been doing this since uh

let's see I joined poke in 2007 so awesome no that's it's just unique

because you don't um at least it's not widely advertised of of companies like yours coming in and and being the

innovator for another company yeah it's uh it's kind of a unique position to be in but um I you know as I said I I spent

a decent portion of my career early on working in an innovation consultancy and then uh bounced around a number of

different startups that either I had founded or others had founded and um

finally landed at landed on opening Apollo 21 after uh I spent about the

last year at my previous company um basically running a little SWAT team

that was helping other portfolio companies with their technology needs and so what I found was that effectively

we were doing the work that I'm describing I was just doing it under a a different title and you know being

introduced by a different group of people and um I found that it really

aligned to my background really nicely have this weird mix of um Services

background and creative background and technology and then building companies

and products and things like that and um at at the end of that year of running a

SWAT team somebody in the uh portfolio company tapped me on the shoulder and

basically said hey you might want to go think about doing this because you seem to enjoy it and you know seem to have an

impact doing it so um go and that was the start of Apollo 21 awesome so so um

with leaving the corporate world world um what would you say is the most enjoyable about you know being being the

owner being you know building a new company and all that

um for me it is the opportunity to build a company based on a culture that I

believe in and supporting a team based on the way that I think a team should be

running so I mentioned previously that we are a fully remote company we also operate as a row results oriented work

environment and so effectively we have built a company culture that is

um encouraging of people to be self-sustaining and to be proactive

about their work and basically I don't really care where you are or when you

get your work done as long as your work is getting done and you are able to communicate clear L and participate in

whatever meetings are necessary to you know move projects forward so you want to go sit on a beach with a laptop and

write code amazing if that makes you happy then it makes me happy um and so to me that's kind of the most fun is uh

building a company in in the image that I think makes the most sense sure now

would you give any advice um to somebody in the corporate world that's maybe thinking about leaving

it um a lot of a lot of startups are born out of that kind of moment of

somebody in the corporate world either seeing an opportunity or getting tired of what they're doing and um the O the

biggest piece of advice that I would give is as much as you might be excited about

it don't jump in with both feet and just leave your job and go and create your startup because it's way harder than

most people realize and we see all sorts of success stories all the time so and so company just raised millions of

dollars so and so just got bought for billions of dollars whatever it is and it creates this um this false

expectation that the world of startups and Entrepreneurship is easier than it actually is when in reality it's

incredibly hard and Incredibly stressful and uh has a very

different set of requirements and expectations than being a part of corporate world does so my advice is

start something on the side go explore it find something that you have fun do doing that you're an expert at whatever

and go figure out how to monetize that and I'll give you a perfect example I I

actually run my own side gig and and kind of dog fooding the idea that I'm putting forward here in that um I

started a company about three years ago that designs and produces accessories for off-road camping Vehicles has

nothing to do with my day-to-day with Apollo 21 but it's proof for me that you

know if you're interested in something I was you know I was living in California at the time was excited about getting out and camping and stuff like that and

as I was doing it I was going huh I really wish I had a blank and so I just started making a blank and then I had a

moment of well if I need this surely somebody else does and uh breaking my own rule I did not go through the

customer development process at the time and um fortunately it worked out on this particular side project but um I found

that a lot of people wanted the thing that I had created and so um the first thing that I ever built was a like

storage and sleeping platform for the back of my SUV and I posted some pictures of it on a couple of Facebook

groups some forums and things that I'm in and immediately people just came knocking and going hey can I get that for vehicle whatever hey can you can you

help me make it for this and so I started creating um how-to manuals literally just like documents of okay

step one you know cut here step two drill here whatever and started selling

and you know it's a great business because it's a digital deliverable that you know has basically zero overhead and

it's a way to begin to monetize what you're interested in and excited about so that work doesn't feel like work and

so if you're in the corporate world and you're thinking about getting into something of your own my advice is start there something start with something

that's fun so that when you're at the end of a 40 50 60 hour corporate work week and you need to be doing something

for your side gig it's not hard to do because you find it enjoyable yeah

that's fair what what now of all the companies that you've worked with because look your website it's quite a

few so it's I feel like you got a good sample at least what what's one uh common thing that it's holding

companies back from either growing or becoming more Innovative good question oh that's a really good question

um I'm gonna treat that as two questions actually Jeff so um keeping folks from

growing is um a lot of it just comes down to operational shortcomings or

companies that haven't exactly figured out product Market fit yet and are still figuring out who do we want to talk to

or how does this little part of our offering align to this broader part of our offering and is it the same target

market things like that um if you want to shift that kind of thinking into Innovation there's a much longer and

larger conversation to have because one of the things that we find is that um research effectively has revealed that

companies get lost in Innovation theater because of the way that companies are

built today and so if you look way back in history companies began as a way to

create effectively a family business could be handed down from generation to generation that could build a legacy and

that would exist with a longevity and over the last however many hundreds of

years you want to look at it um the lifespan of companies has grown shorter and shorter and shorter and

shorter and shorter to the point where I believe the average lifespan of a company of a publicly traded company

today is something like 12 years like wow yeah exactly so a company will become a startup disrupt an existing

Market grow IPO and die in 12 years and

so the and you're not saying like get bought out you're saying just completely fizzle out yeah yes exactly or possibly

get bought out but get bought out and subsumed by the parent company to the point where they no longer exist as

opposed to getting bought out but continuing to operate as a standalone organization um and the reason for this

especially as we think about Innovation and what it means for companies and this is why we are so focused on Innovation

and why it comes up so much as I'm blabbing on here is um if you look at the metrics that established companies

use to track how their business is doing those metrics are all aligned to

near-term growth to creation of shareholder value to conservation of capital and growth of capital Holdings

and are focused on creating efficiency and mitigating risk and if you look at all of those things how do I ring every

penny out of every penny that goes in for example um how do I ensure that my

quarterly earnings reports continue to show growth what you find is that companies become less and less inclined

to spend on exploration and discovery which generally then leads to Innovation

and so what you find is a tug-of-war between um companies that are execution focused and are focused on driving all

of their metrics uh either down when it comes to risk and capital expenditure

and things like that or up when it comes to um how much money they're making uh as opposed to companies that are

focused on learning and discovery which then leads to oh my God we found out

that customers blank and therefore we think there is an opportunity for us to create a new product to fulfill that

need create a new company to fulfill that need Etc and the problem is that the activities that go into that type of

Discovery cost money and don't generally have a fast return on an investment so

if you look at companies that are focused on how am I going to grow numbers for next quarter the idea of spending money to explore potential

customer needs potential new product opportunities things like that don't align to the goal of growth quarter over

quarter because you're spending money that isn't inherently creating a return until you find a massive win and that's

kind of the last part of all of this is as you look at companies that are innovating well what you find is that

they are experimenting at the fringes often and as cheaply and quickly as

possible and those experiments look like launching new products launching new companies investing in things partnering

with startups things like that which all cost money and you end up with this cumulative effect of um you know

companies are going to make a hundred Investments and I'll use investment Loosely into something that they're

making or something that somebody else is making if it's a an outside company that they're investing in for example um

and maybe maybe one or two of those Investments are going to payoff and 98 of them are going to fail and show no

return and that's a really hard thing to convince a CFO of accepting we want we

want to invest in a hundred things and one or two of them are going to see a return your CFO is gonna look J go yeah

no you're insane but if you look at the level of return that those one or two

things bring into the company much like you look at the returns that successful startups for example uh can Foster

you're talking about enough earnings off of one or two successes to cover the losses on the 98

failures and then a whole bunch more and so what you need to look at is not so

much the frequency of success but the magnitude of success one massive win

will wipe out 99 failures and bring in a ton of additional capital and that's

what you have to align for in order to see success in innov is the one win out of 100 failures right

now have you like seen or what's your opinion on what industry might be like

oversaturated with people um or businesses oh that's a really

interesting question and one that I have not thought a whole lot about um I have to admit I don't have a good answer for

that off the top of my head but it's one that's worth worth thinking about I mean the I guess the easiest answer right now

and we were talking about AI earlier is if you look at the you know the the Venture investment landscape right now

if you don't have ai somewhere in your company's pitch deck you're not getting

investment cash and so the result is that you know 99 out of hundred things

that are being launched today are AI applied to Blink and you can get into the whole you know

is it worth it or is that right uh you know how many of those are going to succeed and it ain't going to be 99 out

of 100 um but the real question there is who's actually adding or creating value

through what they're doing as opposed to just taking Ai and applying it to something that isn't that difficult to

to kind of consider adding AI to you know should I startup company call

you uh we are happy to talk to startups uh we have a lot of experience in the

startup space the startup activity for us aligns more to Apollo 21 Ventures

which is is the Venture building side of our company and through Apollo 21 Ventures uh we build and launch

internally sourced ideas and then we also work with a small subset of Founders to help launch their ideas so

we're more than happy for folks to give us a shout if interests align and we're excited about the idea that you're

bringing to the table then we are more than happy to talk about it the other thing that we are currently working on

is launching what is effectively a customer development pre accelerator program so if you look at a lot of

startup accelerators like a y combinator or Tech Stars or any of the other popular ones most of them are geared

towards companies that have some measure of traction that have something built that are at least a little bit down the

path towards building their company and that's awesome there's a great place in the market for all of those guys but as

I described earlier we're huge proponents of lean customer development and one of the biggest advantages to it

especially for a I would even say early stage startup talk about like a napkin stage startup you have a great idea most

people go cool I have an idea how do I get the MVP built and I would argue you shouldn't go and talk to people first go

and validate that idea go confirm that people like it that they need it and that they want to pay for it and so

we're building an accelerator program that is explicitly focused on that aspect of what it takes to build a

company so that when founders go to apply to a y combinator or stars or

whatever accelerator they might choose they have uh enough validation under their belt and demonstrated that

hopefully they will prove to be a shoe in for those uh accelerator programs and more importantly they have a very

clearcut drisk idea of what they need to be creating so have you um uh actually

turned away it a potential client we definitely have you know we've

talked to a few people who uh just kind of didn't fit exactly what we do or for whatever reason um weren't in

a position to align to how we prefer to execute business and you know uh the

customer development process is a great example some folks just can't get their head around the value of spending you

know what might be as much as three months talking to people and they go well really like you know why should I

pay you to to talk to people for three months and to me the answer is well because if you pay us to talk to people for three months then your build cycle

is going to drop from six months to three months and you're going to drisk the whole thing so it's a time uh time

commitment is all the same but what you the way that you approach the process is dramatically

different awesome sounds like you got a exciting

world uh uh for your business just because you get to like obviously no two businesses the same even in the same

Market but the fact that you get to like it's a whole new adventure every single time you get on a new accli and yes it's

it's one of my favorite things about working in this space um I love the opportunity to explore new things and

you're right every single client brings something new something interesting and for me at least that's the beauty in

what we do is helping solve unique problems and when you do it long enough

what you begin to realize is that um the problem that you know your Rodeo client

brings to the table and the problem that your restaurant client bring to the table uh may sound entirely different

but there's always some threat of similarity behind whatever that problem is and so we're in this unique space of

getting to learn about lots of different businesses and lots of different uh fan

bases and things like that but we also have the opportunity to find that

similarity in the through line so that we can create repeatable processes

around the work that we do that help us build confidence and build understanding

in how we approach that problem solving process why haven't you uh done gone

into just a niche uh like one particular one whether it be Financial obviously

not hospitals because how hard they are but what what what what prevents you from just going Niche uh what has

prevented Us in the past is just the fact that opportunities have come from unique areas and so we would have ended

up Turning Away really interesting business opportunities that uh that didn't align whatever we had done

previously simply because they were new and uh I can't I can't guarantee that we

won't find a more specific Niche but so far we have not been put in a position

that we have to um and it has moments of difficulty you know every time you start

talking about sales and marketing and things like that people start asking you who your ICP is and you know what does

your client profile look like and um it gets a little muddy when we get those questions because is really our ideal

client is somebody who has a problem that can probably be solved by technology and is looking for outside help in doing so and that's a really

broad crappy way to articulate what a business does because people go well I mean every business has problems so

whatever so uh I guess we just haven't found our Niche yet okay I think that

yeah we you know as a company of lanar of our funding you know we kind of struggle with the same thing of of

niching out because you know we can service you know pretty much any small to mediumsized business you know that's

looking for funding you know and so I I kind of relate to that because of you know it's a similar situation

everybody's like why do you not Niche you know like what's your Niche and it's like well I don't you know I don't know

because we've dealt with so many different clients that right you know that it's like I enjoy the the the

difference you know I enjoy dealing with some you know new client that you know has a funding issue and trying to figure

out what the best way to to fund them is exactly exactly you know and as we talk about Innovation Innovation is something

that can be applied to just about every business and so in a way it is our Niche

but at the same time it is a very broad Niche because it is applicable across a lot of different business types and so

um I guess an alternate way to answer the question is we have found our Niche it's just a different type of Niche than

most people think about when they're asked that question it's not a vertical it's a Pursuit I guess sure oh that

makes sense what uh how has the economy been been impacting

you guys uh it has impacted Us in much the same way that I think it's impacted just about everybody there's less money

flowing around people are uh slower to move with their their capital and are

um scared for lack of better terms I was trying to find a better word than scared scared right now you do you have

like anything to to say to those kind of people that aren't maybe scared about um you know spending more money because of

the economy or that um yes and it aligns

right back to what I was talking about with Innovation earlier um if you are

hoarding Capital because of the economic Market you are limiting your ability to explore and discover and therefore to

innovate and while it might be a short-term effort in protecting your business the long-term outcome of that

is that somebody out there is still spending money and working to innovate and disrupt whatever space you're in and

if you're not keeping up then you are dying I agree that's that's and I feel like that that's more

of a good message for like small to medium businesses just because the

larger guys are always out there spending the money yes and no I don't I understand

your point Jee and I don't disagree but um even the larger organizations are you

know being more careful about where they spend convincing them to invest capital in startups for example or companies

that might provide interesting partnership opportunities is a really tough sell when the economic Market is

as difficult as it's been for a while now yeah absolutely well Danny as we

wrap us up here uh first off want to say uh appreciate your time for coming it's

been a pleasure thank you um and I will hyperlink your website to all the

platforms on the video uh for 2.io for everybody to go visit uh what

is what is one thing that you can do to encourage business owners during this time um I have a personal monra that I

live by that I think fits that question and it is fail beautifully and for me

fail beautifully is a reminder that if you're not trying to do something if you're not you know putting in the

effort then you're not going to get anywhere and so you might as well try and fail uh than not try at all and so

failure to me is primarily a learning experience as opposed to a negative experience and I would encourage

everybody to just know that failure is a part of what we do and we're all going

to fail at some point so learning to live with failure is a freedom in and of

itself that's good now what would be the best way to get a hold of you

uh best place to find us is on our website at Apollo 2.io and there's a contact form there

there's a ton of case studies and white papers and a bunch of other fodder that is worth a read at least I hope um you

can find me I am DN apollo2 1.o or give us a shout at hello apollo2 2.io and of

course we're active on all the socials uh I am personally blah blah blah SL

among many on most social things and uh Apollo 21 of course is also active on social media so you can track us down

there as well awesome awesome well we will again hyperlink all that so that it makes it easy for everybody just to

click on it that way you don't have to go Google search in or type in the wrong address but uh again definitely appreciate you Danny uh best of luck to

you and your business if we can do anything now or in the future to help you definitely let us know we'll do what we can to help you really appreciate

that thanks guys absolutely have a good one you too welcome to the business after hours where the ties loosen the

suit relax and we talk Business Without The Boardroom grab your favorite drink

kick back and let's dive into the world of business after hours

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