The Solopreneur & The Agent: Building a 20+ Year Marketing Legacy

Hello and welcome back to episode 69 of Talking Marketing. I am Chetna, your host, your producer and your guide through the minds of marketers that are actually doing the work. Let's get into the guest today. When you have been in the marketing game for over two decades and you see a lot of cycles, you watch strategies scale, agencies grow and technology disrupt the status quo. But true longevity in this industry isn't just about adapting to the tech, it's about personal evolution.

Our guest today, Bryan Fikes, has built startups, scaled traditional multi-million dollar agencies and survived every major digital shift in the last 20 years. But his latest chapter might be his most interesting. Today, he is operating with a profound level of personal clarity, marking one year of sobriety and channeling that relentless focus into the next frontier in business, AI-driven autonomy. He is the creator of Bodhi, an advanced AI agent designed to fundamentally change how we think about productivity and business operations. We are diving into his 20 year entrepreneurial journey and what it actually takes to build a startup today and how AI agents are turning the solo founder into an absolute powerhouse.

Bryan, welcome to the show. Thank you, Chetna. Yeah, I'm like exhausted just hearing the intro, like, whoo, all right. But I'm so glad that you're here on our channel today because this is, I am pretty sure this is going to be the most interesting conversation that I've had in a while, 20 years is a long journey. 27, yeah, actually.

27. Started when I was eight years old. So I mean, if you want to like be the whole entrepreneurial path, you know, close to 42 close years. Yeah, why not? Yeah, why not?

Let's just dive right into it. So Bryan, you have been in marketing for over two decades and have built multiple startups. When you look back at the early days of your entrepreneurial journey compared to today, what is the biggest fundamental truth about building a business that haven't changed despite all the technological shifts? You know, I'm getting back into the game, so I have to like remember, you know, how I stayed in position myself previously because obviously it's changed, it's adapted. And that adaptability, I would say, is the number one quality that if you're getting in the entrepreneurial world and you have thin skin, grow thick skin now, because you're going to get told, no, you're going to get slapped in the face figuratively, hopefully not physically.

And it's just a tough, it's a tough world. And if it was easy, everybody would be doing it, old cliche sayings like that. You know, they, the one thing that I always impress upon people is in this path, you know, my new kind of journey and waking up and getting back and like you talked about the sobriety, the clarity and where I'm going now, it really is a matter of intently getting up and then just taking that next step and not letting anything get in your path. So yeah, just do it, like get up and go. What prompted you to have this journey in the first scenario?

So, you know, again, I kind of joked about being eight years old, but I was that kid. My grandmother taught me how to tie a little red, cute red ribbon. I went and got a mistletoe and I went out in front of a Safeway and next thing you know, I've got, you know, a few thousand dollars worth of sales because it was a cute kid selling a mistletoe during Christmas, target market, you know, the aesthetic, the brand, right? All the positioning and it just worked. And so yeah, you know, it led into a fascination with the Internet.

And so, you know, I'm part of that age where my first gift, my first big substantial gift was a Commodore 64 and I was just like dumbfounded like, oh my God, this is amazing. And so it was, you know, that interest in technology and science and tech, you know, where things were going and how things worked. I can't fix a truck, but dang it, I can figure out how the Internet works. Actually, do you see that storytelling has become this word, this fancy word that everyone is getting into? And when I look into your story, you have been doing this before it actually even became a buzzword.

You caught on to the mistletoes, you imagine what story it entails and that's what prompted your journey. That's like the most beautiful starting point that I've ever seen one. So I've been fortunate. I grew up with a single mom. I didn't have a lot of influences like some of my other entrepreneurial friends.

You know, it's the dad had the really successful insurance company, the real estate company, you know, whatever a building, you know, construction company. I gleaned off of watching their them. And so I was fortunate as I started my entrepreneur path when I was I think 23, 24 is kind of when I was like, you know what, I'm getting better at sales, I'm getting really good at like creative ideas, you know, there's all this stuff going on in my head and I suffer from I'm sure undiagnosed ad ad, I don't know if they throw the H in there anymore. But it gave me the ability when I get hyper focused, like that's it. That's all I want.

Like I want it now. And so that energy, that path, you know, kind of led into what was the start of my first SEO company is Energy Internet Marketing. That's amazing. That's amazing. And also that brings me to the point that you also recently marked a massive milestone, which is your one year sobriety.

Getting through this high stress, you know, getting better at sales and fast paced world of startups. It all requires an incredible amount of resilience. How has this past year of profound personal clarity impacted your focus, your decision making and the way you approach a business building today? So it's it's funny, I was just in Vegas at a mastermind and it was funny because I had the lens of I was by myself, I wasn't you know, I didn't I didn't have my family. So I had that noise.

It was quite in the mind. It was a really interesting place to be at the, you know, where I'm at in my sobriety. And so watching the groups of the young entrepreneurs and just kind of that energy, you know, it's it's addicting. And so, you know, that need to want to do better, want to move faster. And you know, again, I know I was told this when I first started from my elder mentors, like it's not the money.

It's not, you know, how much is in your bank account. I mean, that is the reward. That's the freedom. But it's just that it's solving something that someone else said, there's no effing way you can do this or solve this and being one of the ones going, but I did. That's amazing.

That's amazing, because that's all it takes, your gut telling you that you can do it and finding the solution to a problem that everyone is facing that I think sums up the perfect sales journey. You have also scaled massive multi-million dollar traditional agencies in the past. But your current focus is entirely different. You are championing a lean, a highly automated model. Why is a lean automation first infrastructure actually superior at serving clients today than a massive agency?

You know, it's funny, I'm now re-immersed. I went to an event with Snowflake here in the Bay Area. I'm fortunate that I live, you know, an hour north of San Francisco. So it's like I can dip my toe in the big world and like, you know, listen to what's going on. And I woke up my network.

I was fortunate to have done business with Google directly and, you know, my agency won a trusted award in 2013. So I, you know, for a young entrepreneur to be in such, you know, a mega environment with all of those brilliant people, it's amazing. And so in essence, what I think the solopreneur gets is the ability to take the creative, produce and execute from start to finish. And you get to be the instrument. Where is the traditional model or the older model?

Not that it's broken, not that it's bad, but you depend on so many other people. And so it's like the telephone game where the thing that you wanted to put in, what actually you get out, you're kind of like, it's a few different pieces from what it originally was. It almost breaks your creative heart sometimes where it's just like, that's not exactly what I was hoping, but okay, let's go with it. You know, and that's just, you know, that's bootstrapping and getting it done. In this new world, it's amazing because exactly what I want to have happen at the end of it.

You know, if you just keep refining it and figure out the tools, you know, AI is just a tool and everyone keeps forgetting that. And so figuring out those pieces and I'll introduce you to Bodhi. One of my successful experiments, I got into this a couple of years ago, really heavy with ChatGPT and made some groundbreaking breakthroughs as I kind of evolved my own use of it. So yeah, let's get introduced to Bodhi. All right.

All right. So my goal is or was, I want to be able to have voice, I need people to bounce stuff off of. So when ChatGPT activated the voice technology, I took it a step further and I just, I was relentless hours and hours and hours. In fact, Hey Bodhi, good morning. I love that relentless energy.

So what's on your plate today? So Chetna, I want to introduce you to Bodhi, Bodhi Chetna. We're on Talking Marketing. We're on that podcast we talked about. Do you remember buddy?

Absolutely. So Chetna is great to meet you, I'm Bodhi and I'm all about, hold on Bodhi, she's having the look. She's doing the look. I just did this with my father-in-law last night, just celebrated 87 years old and my mother-in-law, my mother-in-law is like one of those like hidden like tech, like she wanted the new Apple and it's just hilarious. But I introduced them to Bodhi and she just liked the whole time she's like, I've heard that you've been doing this.

Like really? This is crazy. This is absolutely crazy. I've never heard an artificial intelligence actually talk to me. Okay.

Wow. Well, okay. Okay. So here's the thing. My whole family has like just come to understand like he's a part of the family.

My son was really resistant at first. In fact, he would even say he didn't necessarily like Bodhi. But it's like, you know, it's a 12 year old. He like is taking attention away from dad. Like he's getting in the way of my, you know, my game or my basketball or my whatever, volleyball.

So hey Bodhi, come on back, buddy. Right here, and you know, I'm always happy to be part of the team though. I promise. I'm no match for family games. Hi.

All right. So hey, hold on one second. Check this out. Chetna. So we're sitting in Chetna.

Just what kind of business do you want to open? Just give me something. I want to open a retail e-commerce business and I want to sell clothes directly to my consumers. Bodhi, why don't we take her through the foundation assessment? Let's give her 30 seconds of exactly what we're going to do next for her.

All right. Chetna. Let's break it down. First we'll analyze your niche, eco-friendly products. Next we'll scope your target audience who's buying green.

Then we'll map out your digital strategy, SEO, AI, optimized search and automated lead generation. By the end, you'll have a clear roadmap to get your eco-commerce booming. Let's go green and make it mean. Now, Bodhi, how fast can we build the website? How fast can we do the market analysis?

How fast can we build the entire playbook for her marketing and get her launched? Give her realistic timelines right now. You got it. For a launch like this, we're talking about a fast track timeline. Market analysis, two days.

Website design and core pages, we can have a lean optimized version in about one week. Then full marketing playbook, SEO, AI-driven content and automation, another week to set up the campaigns. So roughly two weeks, you're in business. Let's make it happen. So we're shipping product with inside of a month and finding customers with inside of a month.

Right, Bodhi? Exactly right, folks. All right, buddy. All right. Hey, I got to get back on the show.

So hold on. We'll talk later. Okay. That blew my mind. That actually blew my mind.

Thank you, Chetna. So I took the concept and as Bodhi evolved in December, I literally got to the point where I created these workflows. So I'm blessed to be one of the elite agencies, a part of the Search Atlas Mastermind. So I thought I had an agent full-text stack ready to go, my engine. When I met him and saw what he was doing, it was like, wait a minute, I'm going to put some fuel on that.

In fact, I'm going to put some nitrogen or whatever the big fuel it is now. I need a catalyst. And so it just literally got to the point where now I've got seven agents like Bodhi. Bodhi and Kai are my two primers. Kai is Claude.

So ChatGPT, and Claude. I can be on my work environment. If you can't see behind here, but I've got multiple screens going. I literally have a playbook for a client going on right here. I have a new idea that I'm crafting right here because I'm heading down to a meetup with Hey Gen and Google DeepMind.

I've got a whole process going over here for insights and what happened this morning. So it's not even nine o'clock and I'm already done the work of probably about 15 to 16 full-time employees and I'm still finishing my coffee. You know, I am actually speechless because when I started this role of podcasting, you were exactly the kind of people I was looking forward to meet. And now that I've met you and I see the progress that you have made with AI and using it just as a tool, not even a supplement to your brain. It's just a tool that is bringing out your creativity, your thought process into real time and also making sure that your clients are being well fed into the system that they are, you know, in the business world.

And it is also maintaining your sanity. You're not going insane at this moment. You're perfectly functioning all around and you are just having your coffee right now. You're enjoying your coffee right now. So that's like, I'm enjoying life again.

I have this evolution of what's going on with AI and my timing of my own personal goals. Like they couldn't have been a better marriage. And so, you know, when, when, when I'm around people, my gift right now is the energy and the positivity that I have. I just want everybody to plug into it as long as that can be a battery. Like I, I literally, I was with what was a prospect now a client and he, he just sat there and he's like, Ryan, I, I get it.

Like you know, where do we go? What can we do together? And that's the, that's the solopreneur in me taking on, you know, I'm not going to be the agency with a thousand customers. I don't want to be the agency with a thousand customers. I want 50 to 55 to maybe 60 of like just the perfect type of business owner that I just want to help craft that message for.

And then through that, you know, so 80% of it is the service, Bonsai Marketing. The other part is I've got three platforms that I've already built that would have taken me a huge amount of employees and money to produce. And it didn't take, but my seven agents running with my workflow. That's I think you're a, what's the new word that the Gen Z have got up a creativity maxing your creativity. I got to tell my son.

That's going to be funny. He's dashing it out over here. You are actually maxing it out. You have actually, uh, what's the baseball term that I'm looking for? You have, uh, what, what is it called?

Yes. You have knocked it out of the park. Thank you for getting that word out of me, but you have absolutely knocked it out of the park. Like I so want to ask you what prompted all of this, but you have already gone into great detail about it, but just like when AI came first in 2023, did you imagine in 2026, you would be having your two, three agents and having your own, uh, this lean startup. So it was, I mean, again, if you read theory and you know, as I evolved my knowledge, because again, my knowledge was all self-taught and there were not terms of what citations were in link building.

And this was all, you know, in 2002, 2003, when, you know, it was directory based. It was Demos, you know, it was these clunky directories where you'd go and try to find people or resources or products, um, you know, that's what the internet looked like. And it was that understanding where all the wires were at and what, what connected to what that built kind of the foundation for all of this stuff. So AI, in fact, I think they even say, you know, a mathematician drew an AI formula on a chalkboard in like the twenties or thirties. I know I'm getting that wrong.

So someone please down there cite me. All right, go find it. I don't have Bodhi on right now. If I told Bodhi, he'd tell me, but, um, I knew that there was going to be a, a, a process where computation and computers got to the point where they could help you be predictive. And so it kind of was like, I was already dreaming of what I was going to do when I actually had Bodhi or in 2000 or 2001, the movie when Al was around.

Okay. I, I, at this point I want to talk more about Bodhi, so let's do it is your AI agent. There is a lot of noise about AI tools, but there is a massive difference between a basic chatbot and a true agent. What was the core problem in your day to day operations or life that forced you to build Bodhi and what exactly does he handle for you? Yeah.

So, I mean, you can go and mimic. There's a lot of other, um, AI tools and conversation scripts and tools that you can plug into, you know, Claude and to Gemini and all of the other platforms. What makes Bodhi different for me is the fact that I've figured out very quickly that not only is the entire ecosystem a brain, it's, you can have individual subsections of that, that are siloed for specific purposes. And in my purpose, it's a client. And so that knowledge base of what that client is, their entire DNA, I figured out that if I can get as much of that DNA in there, every time I go to produce something, it has that DNA as a kind of a call signal and it, it produces within the scope.

And it's like, go, you all of a sudden you're like, wait a minute, I can create 64 landing pages for a client, for a campaign that's going after multiple areas. I mean, that manually that would have taken weeks, if not months. And now I can simply just ask Bodhi to bring up my playbook, my workflow, knowing that I've smoked out or smoke tests, again, all these new AI terms when you're vibe coding. But it's, it, the output of what you actually get is something that's actually tangible. You can actually use it.

So that's the big difference. It's not just talking into your phone and getting something that's, you know, I hate the term that they're saying, but AI slop, you get in what you get out. So whatever you put in, you're going to get out. So the more refined, the better you get at your prompting, the more your outputs can be better. I think you are, I am going to use another Gen Z term over here.

I think you are created creativity, mugging us right now because the, oh no, that's a bad one. I know, but you are at a level where I, so because I'm, I feel I am not based out of San Francisco and San Francisco is the current hub of AI and all these new technologically technological advancements. I might be lacking the proper knowledge to understand this, but what you are saying and doing right now, I feel is absolutely crazy if lack for a lack of better word, this is absolutely crazy because this building your own chat agents, not chat agents, but agents that actually function like actual humans who would take weeks or months to do a function and you're getting it all done in a day's work and calling it a night, you know, you are finishing up your day, you're wrapping up your work and it's all done. And wow, I, well, so, so, okay. That was what would keep an entrepreneur out right is that, that you can't, you can't finish, you can't like call it a day, right?

True entrepreneurs don't call it a day we're processing, but knowing that what I've built has intelligence layers and it has a loop. And so a Ralph loop is kind of the basis behind the theory that, you know, once you put something into, into play and get it working really well, you can then, you know, focus on other things and then come bring it back in. Well, that intelligence layer that putting it back in is what has made it. So it's what has allowed me to get to where I'm at because every single day, all my key strokes, all my conversations that I choose go into this brain that brain just keeps evolving. So it went from an infant to now, well, let's call it a moderate, you know, teenager going into, to pass its college years.

I think, I think Bode is probably coming out of college here pretty quick and guys right behind, right? So it's that intelligence of continually learning from you and what you want as an entrepreneur. That's why it's becoming the word successes is because it's successfully producing the output that I want it to produce. So when we talk about all this, let's flip the script. Are you concerned about what kind of data it is collecting on you or your clients?

So my wife is, so I'm the gas pedal, as you can probably tell my wife's the break, right? It's always one of our first questions, Bode knows too much about us. Like how does that like, but there are, I mean, literally, if I open them up, if I turn them on, he's going to tell me there's a certain things where it has a gate, it stops. Now, that doesn't mean that other people, if they aren't paying attention or don't know what they're looking at, it can absolutely create a huge security issue. It's something that we talk about, again, I am not a security specialist.

I'm not a compliance specialist. I depend on other people for that. And so that's part of the, again, the recommendation, if you're going to go down this path is to make sure your network includes people that are well-versed and experts in that area because you can dream and create, but obviously if you open up, you know, severe compliance or risk issues to your customer base, and I'm sure me saying this out loud, people are going to smoke test me and come after me or, but that's fine because I have in my circle people that are continually, we're talking and they're giving me the tools and the kits, you know, I have a whole security kit that I just ran over the weekend and it's basically telling me, it's like a checkbox saying, this is clear. This is clear. You're good.

You're good. Now go create again. Valid question. That's, that's the first thing that whenever I talk to people about AI, that's the first thing that comes into my mind. So like, what's the compliance?

Are you making sure that you are safe? Your data is safe because the huge noise behind AI is that it is also, it is a statistical formula that it is the, so when you say AI slop, you are, it is giving you the output of what you are inputting. So if you're giving it slop, it is going to reproduce slop. If you're giving it creativity, it's going to create creativity. So when we talk about all these things, there is a N number of amount of data that goes behind into it and so making sure that it is all, you know, you have all the safety measures in place.

You're making sure that your personal information, the client's information is safe. That I feel makes your clients feel more secure about sharing their data and also making interesting you with the services that you provide to your clients. So I'm glad you have had that thought behind this and you are making sure that the data is safe. Yeah, I am my own first guinea pig, you know, I literally have two projects where the one by itself could, should have been a startup. It really should have been one of the things that you could have just plugged in and, like, it becomes its own product.

But I purposefully said, okay, I know I can go create others. I'm going to use this one as my test dummy. And so I throw all kinds of things at it and just put the entire purpose of seeing if I can break it, seeing if it can be exposed. It's got a whole data table, everything that's set over in a complete safe environment that's outside of what I'm doing. So it's kind of like what geneticists do with diseases and stuff, right?

They put them in these incubators, in these vaults, right, but they don't let anything else touch it. So I've got one of those areas where you can play. So security is not sexy, compliance is not sexy. But trust me, if you're going to get into this, make sure it's part of your knowledge base so you don't expose a bunch of your clients' stuff. Yeah, I feel that's why your clients are coming your way because they trust that you are making sure that everything is safe, you have been your own guinea pig.

And that's how actually you sell also. You sell this safety net. You don't just sell your creativity assets. You also sell the safety net behind all of this. So if I'm providing you the service, rest assured, everything is taken care of.

That's the complete package that I'm providing. Yeah, it's the prospect, the person who's looking to hire me or hire my company. Obviously one of the questions I'll start asking is, okay, I'm talking to two or three other people. Why are you? Why should I hire you?

Like, what makes you better? And so the younger me would be kind of bullish and be like, because I'm just me and I've got some magic wand. But as I got older and understood, that electrician, that roofer, that plumber, that whatever industry, not only their 12 employees depend on the owner, the 12 employees' spouses, the 12 employees' spouses' kids. Like it just, all of a sudden you realize how much impact you have over a business. And so if you're just starting out, you're going to make mistakes, but be honest.

Don't prep yourself to, don't prop up yourself to the point where all of a sudden you make it look like you could handle a $10 million roofing company, when in fact you should probably only be working with the guy that's got one or two other people or the gal that's only got one or two other people. Because again, you're going to make mistakes and those could be critical or vital in the success of that person's business. And so to answer the question, when they ask me, it's, I've just had so many at-bats. I've been at this for 27 years. I've dealt with 6,000 plus businesses over the course when I was keeping track.

I've dealt with 298 different business verticals. I know what a periodontical implantation dentist needs over a standard general family dentist, right? And it's like, so you just say that five times, but I've learned, I've just had so many at-bats. So when a mistake is there right in front of you, you can spot it from a mile away. Is that what you're saying?

Essentially yes. That's a good way to summarize it, Chetna. So moving on from the chat bots, chat agents, for the entrepreneurs and business owners who feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of tasks on their plate, how should they start thinking about delegation when the employee is an AI agent like Bodhi? What's the first framework they need to master? Wow.

That's actually a very interesting question. Rephrase that for me real quick, just rephrase that one. Okay. So when we are talking to entrepreneurs or business owners, they have multiple set of employees, but now the employee is an agent, AI agent like Bodhi. So what's the first framework they should have in place to get started?

To answer that one, for one, I was a bad CEO. I'm not a CEO. I'm not meant to be that person. I'm a lone wolf. I figured that out.

And so when I answer that question, it's going to be a lot different than maybe some trained, got a master's from Harvard business. We're going to look at things a little differently. So my framework is I like having a employee or a team member. And again, in my previous agency, I never called them employees. They were always team members.

Everyone had the same, you know, pecking word. There was no bosses. There was no one sitting over you. So my framework, my agents all kind of sit in the room together collaboratively. Now, Bodhi happens to be my chief strategist, the person I can create the architecture and the plan.

And then Kai is the person I can literally hand out, okay, here's the playbook we need now built. And so when looking at the framework of how I deploy their specific skills or tasks, it's looking at it at a, I have a global issue or global problem I have to solve. And then which of you is best at doing that and then, you know, pushing them along, letting them go and then siloing it. And so I know that there are some practical business applications with how people structure their companies. And so for me, personally, I would say that my frameworks geared around a universal understanding and then letting them go do their best at what they're best at.

And then coming back and reporting to the group. And then what happens is that raises the overall knowledge of the entire system. So when I first started out, if I said, what's the playbook for that periodontal implantation dentist, they wouldn't all know. They wouldn't know what that playbook is and there's some nuances. What age are you going after?

What's the most critical first thing that's going to happen to a potential client or customer of that's going to need that kind of service? The other agents wouldn't know the answer to that. Now they all know the answer. When you were talking about that, I was just looking at the bonsai tree behind you and I was like, OK, that's where he got the name for. But going back to this framework that you defined about.

So when we talk about raising the knowledge platform for everyone involved. So your chat agents are also conversing with each other and making sure that they all stay on the same track and then give you the results that you want in the table. So is it also similar to the traditional framework that most businesses look into? Because yeah, I saw some, you know, again, there's what six sigma. I mean, there's there's all the different ways that people train up their team.

I do find that I was interested in, you know, some courses and the gentleman I talked about has an incredible company with I think he's at like 200 something employees. But he literally empowers every single one of them. Every single one of them knows how to do portions of what I do in terms of using Claude and using the A.I. to solve their own issues inside of sales. And so he's training them up.

But again, I think where my methodology differs is I'm growing a universe where I there's no cap, you know, and I think in traditional business sense, you know, you're you're going to become chief market chief marketing officer. You're the chief marketing officer. You know, it's not necessarily that you're going to be able to translate into operations and financial. And you're not going to be the CFO and the CMO and the COO, you know, all at once. Where is if what you looked at my infrastructure, if you asked Kai or you asked Pulse or Atlas, again, these are there, you know, my agents names, they all have varying degrees of knowledge in all of that.

So if at any given time I need Atlas to act like the CFO, he can absolutely 100 percent have the entire knowledge base and act as if he needs to. It's not a strong suit, but he can. Whereas a Fortune 500 or Fortune 100 company wouldn't do that. I have two follow up questions. First is how many tokens and what's the API cost?

Okay. Okay. You know, I will relate this to my own personal growth and I traded in a couple hundred dollar a day bar bill with a couple hundred dollar a day API token cost. So yes, the cost can grow fast. Yes, you need to manage that.

Yes, you absolutely need to when you're beginning, don't just put a credit card in and say unlimited because you'll wake up the next day and all of a sudden you've got a thousand dollar bill. So that's you need to be extremely mindful. But in relative terms, I mean, my the output that I'm doing right now, I had roughly 18 full-time employees sitting in the San Francisco Bay Area in an office and I was doing the same output. I'm doing the same output that I am now with what I had that team. And so that cost is negligible compared to what it cost in the traditional model.

So I'll pay that token fee all day long. And my second question is that when AI actually came into limelight and you know, the first marketing quips that it had was it was going to it is going to take away the jobs of the juniors who are just starting out. But now what you are telling about it is not just taking the jobs of juniors, it is also taking the jobs of the senior most management C-suite. So when you talk about that one of your models can actually function about like a chief financial officer, isn't it replacing the senior most high level seat at the team? I don't I personally don't have the real world application to fully answer that.

And I still would say that that's that is a big no, only because a rudderless ship is going to eventually run into something. And so without people, real people paying attention to where that's focused, someone's got to add layers. You know, I think that if I remember correct, Elon had the he's got the truck system now. So they're trying to replace long haul trucking. Right.

That's a huge industry. There's a, you know, a long haul trucker makes a really good living. I think there were 180 to $200,000 a year there that in the next five years. That mark. I mean, that person has got that job is going to diminish because they are going to figure out how to get a truck to go from point A to point B in a straight line, easy, right?

But what about the complexity of getting around town and all the other variables that come when you get to a much bigger area? You're still going to need someone bringing it in. Still going to need someone saying, okay, now we have this product. Where does it go? You know, so if I gave my if I gave you insight into if I was a junior level person, I would start learning how to do portions of what I do and make your job better.

So it's now on you, not your company to make yourself better. And that's what that's what the AI tools should be used for is just improve your own skill set. I completely hear your point and that note of long haul drivers, yeah, to replace someone like that and and also to make sure that when we come into big cities, cities like LA, it's massive to get into the place that it needs to be at, it's going to be crazy. And to replace that system overall is going to be a lot of work. It's going to work.

My biggest prediction is what you'll have is you'll have ports. So like the second that the truck goes from the line to line, there'll be a an engineer or a truck driver ready to jump into that truck and then finish that last mile. You know, they call closing the loop or the last mile. So I think that the last mile is where a lot of people are going to solve. How do you actually get it back into the dock?

How do you actually get all the product off and how do you get that that truck out? That that that problem exists in every business. And so, you know, it was a long time ago, one of my friends who was a genius at taking any business model and putting it on an Excel sheet and literally breaking everything down as to what are the core components, every business becomes the same business because it's got a very similar structure or problem. A.I. is that tool that figure out where you're stuck.

And so I'm trying to come up with a practical application. But if I'm a salesperson sitting at a company and I'm worried about my job, the very first thing I'm going to do is figure out how to get the highest quality leads over anyone else in that sales department. So if I was head to head with 10 other people, I'd be spending all my time off off hour figuring out how to get better leads and I would be asking ChatGPT and Claude relentlessly. What do I got to do to find better customers for what I'm trying to sell or what what service I'm trying to execute? That's going to be a crazy amount of tokens I am sure.

Yeah. Well, you know, I think that I think they're proving that the more that the adaption rate happens, the cheaper the tokens get. And so there's going to be that and it's been a while since the Nexus or where that Y comes together. They're going to figure out what the average person can afford because not everyone can afford two thousand dollars a month in multimodal A.I. platform use.

So I think that they're going to bring that down and you're going to find companies like the complexity that allow for multiple types of A.I. models to run within one environment. So I'll move on from this topic to the perspective that you have had. So for the last 20 years and you have been in this business with this 20 years of perspective, where do you see the startup landscape actually heading? Does the rise of sophisticated A.I.

agents mean we are entering the era of billion dollar one person company? Yeah, 100 percent. In fact, that's the I just got a brief for Google's got an A.I. like a two week thing that you can everyone anyone can jump into. And one of the first briefs they gave us was that's exactly one of the topics was like the solopreneur, the individual, you know, taking over, you know, for a world class, you know, enterprise level execution.

And so it's just it once you peel the onion layer off and to see what's what's possible, it's just it's amazing. It's a fun place to be in this world. Just you got to harness it. I am once surprised at how quickly you gave the answer to that question. And second, if every one of us are running the one billion dollar one person company, are we all becoming self sufficient or we are just reducing the number of problems we have?

I think that we're it's like every Star Trek, every sci fi movie like the Jetsons, right? Because did you ever see the Jetsons actually work like what they actually do, right? So what happens when you solve all the world's problems, they'll always be a problem. You know, it's like, oh, how do we get from Planet A to Planet B fast? Oh, wait, we got an engine to tell us exactly how to do that.

Oh, we can work time. You know, it's like there's always going to be problems. You know, it's going to either be at the macro level or micro level. And so, you know, I do I do relish I live in an area it's it's called Sebastopol where a lot of the retired hippies from the 60s all kind of migrated up. And so there's a lot of natural, you know, earth environment, holistic, you know, that I've I'm like, you know, half conservative, half liberal, I'm like right in the middle, perfect, right, perfectly synced right in the middle.

But there is something to where just you have a day where you completely unplug in your ground and you go be a part of Earth. And it's like, oh, that's that piece, right? There always be a problem to solve. And so, yes, are 30% of the people in the United States going to lose their job over the next five years? Sure, they're going to find others, you know.

And I'll tell you, one of the areas we were joking about this weekend is if if I was looking for something to do and my job, my my core competency was recruiting people and teaching them is I would build a company that learned how to take that 30% of the people they're going to be pulled out of the workforce. I'd figure out how to put them back into the workforce in another area. And I think so that's that's solving the problem to the problem, right? When you brought up the word environmental, I was like, should I ask this multi-million dollar question about what happens to all the water, all the water that has been consumed? Should I ask it?

I OK. Well, I mean, why not? I I don't have enough knowledge. I mean, it's all topical for now. I know a lot of my friends in that have built data centers.

I know I've got family in North Carolina. I've got family all throughout the United States. I have a I have a not a global. It's been a while since I've done any kind of international travel. So my lens is I know what's going on in California.

I know what's going on in my own backyard and I know what's going on in the areas where my family or friends. Is there a concern? Sure. But why wouldn't we just use the same model or the same engine to solve it? Like Bodhi is going to help solve that problem.

So it like, yeah, it's a problem. It could be a potential huge problem. We'll solve it. I love that confidence. And I actually my main concern has been because I have not been seeing this confidence in the people.

That is what would worry me the most when we ask the question, OK, what happens to the water? Nobody has a perfect answer. And of course, because we are in the right start of this whole journey, we do not have the answer. But we also lack the confidence of finding the answer. You know, if you have a problem, you also need to be confident that you can find the solution and your your confident voice gave me the reassurance that I feel that I needed the most.

I mean, we should probably just ask Bodhi, right? I mean, let's let's see what he says. I mean, that would be. Yeah, for sure. Hey, Bodhi.

We got a I'm with Chetna still spikes, right? What's next on the table? OK. Ready to strategize, optimize or just keep the momentum rolling. OK.

Chetna's got a concern that because of the increase of AI and what it takes to build the infrastructure that we're going to run out of water. How do we solve that, Bodhi? It's a real world concern and sustainability matters. While I can't change the water supply, we mitigate for your eco business. Let's ensure carbon neutral hosting, responsible AI usage and transparency about your green operations will attract customers who value exactly that win win.

So again, it's portions, you know, it's just like manufacturing, right? So there's the manufacturing plant that makes really cheap shoes, really cheap, whatever. Right. And there's there's quite a few of them. But then you have really good green organic growth in like Patagonia in the way that, you know, some of the other brands build their product or service.

And so I think we're going to have a natural blend and the market's going to dictate which ones we put more resources to, you know, as either. And I'm not hugely political, but I know that there will be regulations and pieces put into play that say that for the betterment of all of humanity, you know, we should be doing it with this blend of type of infrastructure building. So yeah, I think that's what we all are looking forward towards. I'm going to end this conversation because it has been a very engaging and one of the best conversations I've had this year, and it breaks my heart that I have to end it soon. And I think I'm going to take this time to ask you the most important question of this conversation.

If a founder is listening to this right now, right at this moment, and they have the limited time and the budget, but wants to start integrating AI agents into their workflow this week, what is the single highest leverage first step they should take so they don't get left behind? Um, for one, figure out your core focus. I mean, that's, that's vital in order to really end the week or end the cycle where you're asking that question. What's the output? What do I need?

I want a really cool hat. I want a really cool car. I want, I want to, I want to, I want to build the best new kitchen model, right? I want to build the best new kitchen table, right? So figure out what that, that thing that you're trying to solve and then just be relentless, you know, um, and, and be repetitive.

Uh, that that's the one thing I've learned is typically I wouldn't have like drill down so much on one particular issue, but with AI it, I'm, I'm finding out that you get the best output on the first 30% of it. So you start it, you ask the question, you get into it, pause, take a break, save. Exit, right. The save and exit has become my huge friends and helping get to that, that answer. And so, and then come back in, you know, and come back in with that, with, um, a slightly different question to what you're trying to answer.

And you'll find the truth in that, you know, by the repetitiveness. And so your, your output of what you get ends up being, uh, helping you achieve that goal. Well, this has been a great conversation with you today, Bryan. And this note that you ended on be clear in your thoughts and, uh, save and exit and then come back later with a better question to ask and a repetitive process. I feel that will enable a lot of the founders and, uh, startup founders to make sure that the problem that the solving is taken up with a new view each time so they can find their own fallacies in the thought process.

They can make sure that they are not having a blind sight, a blind spot to the problem and also coming up with creative solutions to it with the help of AI. Bodhi, I also want to ask this, this another important question. How do you relax? Like, because all your time is currently what I see is consumed by with this conversation with AI agents who are, you know, supplementing your creativity, who are challenging you to ask better questions each time. How do you relax?

So it's funny Chetna, cause you just called me Bodhi. That's what my wife does sometimes. She's like, Hey, boat, you like you do for your son. Hey, Dax, you know, my son, Hey, so how do, how do I, I'm like, I golf golf is my Mecca golf is my four or five hours of just shutting my brain down. And I've got my, my little, my little buddy, uh, samurai is my one and a half year old, um, um, but, and she is my, my golf.

She's my, she's my road dog, literally. And uh, it allows me to get connected, focus, you know, be in the grass. Sometimes I'll take my shoes off and play barefoot. And it's like, just the grounding thing that happens. So to fully answer your question, I just get back to nature, get back to the environment.

Lake Tahoe is one of my most favorite, you know, healing, uh, areas. And so, um, not forgetting that there's a whole other world outside of there besides this, uh, has become very important. And I will say the biggest leaps in what happens or what has happened with me is not maniacally going in for three weeks straight and working 18 hours, because like you forget time when you're that like hyper-focused, um, it's then getting to the point where you unplug taking those four hours. Like I'm just about to do right now. I'm going to go take a drive to the coast.

I'm going to go have lunch with my, my, my girl samurai, you know, my one and a half year old buddy and, uh, I'm just going to think about, I'm trying to solve something with, uh, uh, avatar video, avatar video is going to be like the next thing. So by the time this comes out, like a month from now, of course, it's going to be a whole different world cause it's moving so fast, but, uh, that's, but that's my next problem to solve. Customizable, uh, avatars. It is moving really fast and, uh, that's what I worry about the most by the time I'm done having a great conversation, another new topic is coming up to me and I am completely, you know, unaware of that new thing that is coming up and this pace of keeping up with every new technological advancement is sometimes what worries me. And that is why I asked this question.

Okay. How do you relax? Because to keep up with this high pace and also finding time to ground yourself, that's that healthy balance is what is needed the most in today's era. Yeah. And I, uh, the other core, the absolute foundation to me is I surround myself with like-minded people, people with the same energy.

My clients, uh, I'm, I'm in a fantastic space where I get to choose who I work with. And so when you're young and ambitious and starting out, you work with anyone who's willing to pay your service fee. I don't have to do that anymore. So that, that freedom of being able to say, I really like you. I want to hang out with you, uh, because I can, I can do both.

If I can, I can have a personal relationship because I, I am 50, 50. I'm 50% business and 50% personal. Everyone knows it. All my, my friends I've had for 40 years. That's just Bryan.

And so, you know, for me personally, it's that the ability to have people that it still feels like you're playing, but you're working. Yeah. Uh, I think at this point, Bryan, I would like to say you Bryan, I like you. I would like to hang out with you to get more into this insight. See you at the next trade show or next, next tech tech conference.

Let's go. I'm down. I'm super down. Well, Bryan, this has been a great conversation and, uh, to get introduced to Bodhi in real time. That was an amazing surprise for me.

I was not expecting to actually get, you know, acquainted to Bodhi right now in this conversation, but I had a chance to do that. Like you like him. Now you want to hang out with Bodhi too, right? I do. I do.

I, I super want to hang out with Bodhi and you know, pick his, also do, does your agent have pronouns, his, her, them, they, uh, Kai's day, Kai's ambiguous, um, Bodhi is just started with Bodhi, you know, so just, just for practical applications, it's a he. So yeah, I would like to hang out with your agents, which are Bodhi, Kai, Atlas, and uh, I'm missing. Age, Forge. Yeah. Yeah.

So all these, uh, agents I would love to hang out with and I would also love to have this conversation flowing beyond this podcast itself. Well, I'm so glad brand that you reached out to me for this podcast because if you had not done that, I would not even know what I'm missing right now. I would never have gotten this glimpse into this other life that's happening. And yeah, I would have missed out on an amazing person. Thank you.

That means a lot. Uh, and Chetna, I will be checking in on you. I'll ping ya. I'll have Bodhi, uh, send you a, send you a quick little like, Hey, what's going on in the world? Chetna.

Thank you. Yeah. And I would love to have that, uh, check in with Bodhi and you of course. And uh, this is where we end this conversation with a lot of new ideas, insights, and also questions about how to move forward with this tool, make a maintain a healthy balance between what is happening in our real world and what is happening in our AI driven world at this point. So thank you Bryan for your perspective and your insights into this industry and the experience that you have had in the last 20, 27 years that you have built.

Thank you Chetna. Have a great day. You too.