BizTech Superhero

Joshua McNary [00:00:00]:
Welcome to the Biz Tech Superhero, the podcast that empowers you to unleash the technology superpowers within your business. I'm your host, Joshua McNary. I'm joined by today's superhero, Andy Stoll, who is founding executive director of the E Ship Alliance. Andy and I will be discussing his background in entrepreneurial community building and how technology enables him and the business communities he interacts with to thrive. Andy, welcome to the show.

Andy Stoll [00:00:26]:
Joshua, thanks for having me. This is fun. We've known each other quite some time, probably more than a decade, and it's fun to see you still. I think when we first met, you were just. You were getting your own business started around technology and helping businesses. And it's fun to be back in the. In the now in the podcast form to talk more about this. We've always geeked about about this stuff over time.

Andy Stoll [00:00:44]:
So excited to be here.

Joshua McNary [00:00:45]:
That's great. Yeah, it's one of the great things about doing this podcast is reconnecting with new and old friends. So it's good to have an old friend on the show. But for folks just meeting you for the first time, Andy, unlike me, could you tell them a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Andy Stoll [00:00:59]:
Yeah. So I think the simplest way to think about it is I have. I'm a social entrepreneur, so I start and grow businesses that have, you know, not just a financial return, but social impact. And I've been doing that since I graduated from college 20 some years ago. And almost everything I've started revolves around the notion of how can we make communities a better place to support entrepreneurs, people starting and growing businesses. That is often called startup community building or entrepreneurial community building, and even more recently been called entrepreneurial ecosystem building. And how do you. What are the actual things you would do to help a community be more supportive of people with businesses? And I've thought a lot about that.

Andy Stoll [00:01:40]:
The E Ship alliance, which is a new endeavor that has grown out of a decade of work, is really around building the professional field of entrepreneurial ecosystem building and. And helping people across the country who are trying to improve the conditions for entrepreneurs. And we use technology a lot and getting excited to dig into a little bit more what those tools are and how we think about it. And I'm particularly interested in how that applies in communities and for people who are trying to build communities of people.

Joshua McNary [00:02:07]:
Yes. That's great. You've done a lot of amazing work over the years since we met and back when we met here in my community of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, you were integral in helping us get our act together with regards to entrepreneurship. And it's still thriving here because of a lot of the work you and others did back in that period. So I know that helped me and my business getting going back in the day. So I appreciate that, appreciate what you're doing, continue to do. So can you tell us a little bit more about then that journey for you, Just your kind of business journey, entrepreneurial journey, what you've been doing, you know, in this recent time, since we've been in different places and maybe a little bit about, you know, what's landed you currently at this E Ship Alliance.

Andy Stoll [00:02:48]:
Sure, sure. So at the heart of of my work is this question. How do you build communities that intentionally grow entrepreneurs, creatives, innovators, people like you, people probably like a lot of the listeners and the, the. The sort of insight that I was fortunate to come across almost 25 years ago was that if you can build a community that connects folks together who are starting and growing their businesses, that in that community, those folks will help each other. You know, sometimes the bestseller for an entrepreneur is another entrepreneur who's already been through that challenge. And when I started doing that work, it was mostly actually out of Iowa, as you had mentioned. And over the last 15 to 20 years, it sort of got bigger in scale, wider in geography, and so learned a lot on the ground doing work in local communities. How do you create the conditions, knit the community, create the culture so folks with ideas can find the resources they need to succeed? That eventually led to some work nationally and helping folks doing that around the country, which led me to the Kauffman foundation, which is a private family foundation based in Kansas City.

Andy Stoll [00:03:53]:
Thinks a lot about entrepreneurships. I worked there for eight years and helped give away and invest a lot of the money with the Coffin Foundations. Foundations. Foundations are, you know, as, you know, sort of large buckets of money meant to do social good in the world and helped lay the groundwork for what today is called the E Ship Alliance. What is interesting and where we may get to on this is under the Kaufman foundation had access to a lot of resources, not just money. Kaufman brand's really big. I have a team of communication folks and technology folks and filmmakers to help us do that work over eight years inside of the foundation or within the walls of the foundation. And the Eship alliance is really the next phase of that work where we spun everything out of out of the foundation into a national nonprofit called Eship Alliance.

Andy Stoll [00:04:41]:
And we took the community that we built in the earlier phases. And it's now really being anchored by our national nonprofit network that is fairly new, though, obviously continuation of almost a decade of work that has required us to do more with less because we don't have the resources of a giant family foundation. And so at this stage, we, I was hired as the executive director about a year ago and that we took a year to sort of put the plan together to what. How does this national nonprofit alliance work? What does it do? How does it make money? Does it provide resources to its members and to society? And then now we're at the stage where we've got to scale those, those ideas to reach more people and more communities. But without the giant, the resources of a giant foundation, we have to really leverage technology. And fortunately I've been doing that my entire career. I love technology. My background's actually in filmmaking.

Andy Stoll [00:05:37]:
I'm always, you know, at one point I think I was a computer science major for like 20 minutes. I love of technology. I'm an early adopter of technology. The landscape has obviously vastly changed over, you know, since I was in college. But even in the last number of years, yes. And we've been using all sorts of the pieces and the tools that are probably really familiar to many of your listeners. But what, what the bottom line is, is this is the seventh, I think, thing I've started organization, nonprofit, for profit, whatever. It's the seventh one.

Andy Stoll [00:06:09]:
And we've been able to do it with almost an entire volunteer workforce using the technology that exists today with one at this point, paid staff member, which is me. And we've been able to reach national and globally. I actually just spoke at an event in Hungary via Zoom and connect with folks doing what we're doing in Hungary and got an invitation yesterday to speak in Texas virtually. And so it's been really interesting, you looking at the technology stack to say, okay, you have, you don't have the resources of giant foundation more. So how to use technology to scale, to increase the reach of the community. And what parts of this is technology and what part is it like old school standard, sort of human to human community building and thinking through, you know, which tool do we use but which is which is actually the technology useful? Or in some cases the technology, while handy and efficient, might not be the best way to build a community. So we can get into all this obviously in our conversation, some of the things that are top of mind as we, as we get into this.

Joshua McNary [00:07:16]:
That's all great. And I could see the wheels turning as you're describing that because you basically have this arm, this new startupy thing that you're doing over the last year and now you're figuring out how to try to scale that while also dealing with the fact that our technology landscape and our expectations of what we do with our technology has changed a lot. I mean, you brought up two examples of speaking virtually globally just in the last moment there. And years ago you would have had to fly out to those places.

Andy Stoll [00:07:47]:
I know you did and I did. And it's. And it will all fun to go to Hungary. Think of all the work, the costs and the whatever. And it's like, well, here I just zip zam, boom. I'm talking to folks in Hungary. And I think the, I think the thing that really has settled on me in the last. It's been about a year of direct work in this, in the ship lines is that I couldn't have done this even 5 years ago without more staff, more, more just more humans.

Andy Stoll [00:08:14]:
And then people really cared where you were at. So I'd say like 10 years ago I started a thing with a group of folks called the Startup Champions Network. And people would say, well, where you you based? And at the time I was based in Iowa. And there's a little bit of geographic bias there. And people go, well, why? I was. Because I live here. And now today I live actually in Omaha, Nebraska. And people be like, oh, where are you based? And I'll say Nebraska.

Andy Stoll [00:08:37]:
Cool. And then they just go on. And it doesn't matter as much where you are at. If your business is technology enabled, your audience is national or global. In our case, it's pretty national though it does reach global. And nobody cares where you're at as long as you, they have the ability to access the information, the community in our case. And that the platforms almost make geography like unimportant if the thing you're doing isn't geography based.

Joshua McNary [00:09:07]:
Right, right, right.

Andy Stoll [00:09:08]:
Nobody really cares where you're at as long as they can access the resources, the services or whatever it is that you're selling or putting out into the world. And technology allows that in a way now that is almost invisible. And then we can. And we can. I'm sure it's happened in other episodes of this show. But like you can get into like the psychology of what Covid. The COVID pandemic. 19 pandemic.

Andy Stoll [00:09:31]:
To shift people to be like, I don't really care where you're at. And, and last comment is just thinking about, you know, I mentioned Iowa, I mentioned Nebraska growing up as a Kid and wanting to work in the film and media industry and technology, the, the general cultural discussion in those places was, well, you got to move to the coast like you la, you gotta go to New York, you gotta go to San Francisco. And while there are still some truth to that, particularly around connecting with the key players and the networks, it's so much less important. And if you can leverage the technology platforms again, nobody cares where you're at because your thing is now instantly global. If you use a platform, if the.

Joshua McNary [00:10:12]:
Thing you're pitching, your value proposition is valuable enough to the person. Yeah, it doesn't, it's transparent. I mean, there's people making amazing YouTube channels that couldn't even be conceived of even maybe five years ago, like you were saying, that are rivaling the same attention, maybe not the same quality as, you know, Hollywood, but they're rivaling the same attention that we would have thought as kids, like there was no other way to do it.

Andy Stoll [00:10:38]:
Yeah. And I, and, and then the other pieces, the networks have gone total digital. So example being when I was in college, I wanted to work in Hollywood and I went, I spent two summers out there doing internships and other things. And one was just to see if I liked LA and Hollywood. But the other thing was honestly like being in the Midwest, I couldn't just ring up Ron Howard's office and be like, hey, could we chat? And so I had to go there. And when I was 18 years old, I spent a summer and I had like 53 coffees with people in the industry and I was this young 21 year old kid just trying to break in. And, and that's where I learned about the informational interview where you could reach out to someone, say, hey, could I have a 15 minute coffee with you? And I, and I got really good at it and I ended up talking with people from Ron Howard's office and other places. But it required me to like kind of jujitsu my way into these connections, then drive down to West Hollywood and get to their office, then go in and I had 15 minutes, whereas now, you know, I'll get an email from.

Andy Stoll [00:11:36]:
And I got an email from somebody in like, I don't know, Kyrgyzstan that'll be like, hey, I'm thinking about entrepreneurial ecosystems. Could we do a Zoom meeting for 30 minutes and sure, that's great. I'm able to do that. And, and they're able to connect into my networks. And then I get connected to Kirk, extended 15 minutes through the zooms. And I think the key, the way I Think about it is like, the technology is useful, but for a lot of things, but at the heart of an entrepreneurial journey, at the heart of. Of a thriving. Almost anything is a community of people.

Andy Stoll [00:12:07]:
And the technology allows you to build those relations faster, quicker, geography matters less. But you still need to build the relationships. And I mean, a good example is even you and me, like you and I met in 3D. We work together. We were co. Co Working buddies. And so we built a relationship 15 years ago, almost now or something like that. And then, you know, we see each other here and there, but then you shoot me like, hey, you want to come on my podcast? And of course I do.

Andy Stoll [00:12:33]:
I don't even know what the podcast is about because you and I have built a relationship and we've helped each other over the years and I want to help you. And it's opportunity, obviously, to get my, My, my voice out. Sure thing. Because that trust and that relationship was built. And now we can do this via zoom and all the other technologies that you're using to produce this. Not possible 10 years ago, but it did require human. Us having a friendship, a relationship, business relationship. So that, that when you called me and said, hey, do you want to do this? I was like, sure.

Andy Stoll [00:13:01]:
I mean, I didn't even really look at it closely because I was just for you. And I'm like, yeah, I was happy to help. And that, that is sometimes gets lost in the technology conversation. I think people get so focused on the technology, they're like, oh, cool, I could Zoom with someone in Kyrgyzstan. And they don't realize. They sort of miss the point that there's human relations at the center of that. And that that person from Kyrgyzstan didn't actually cold email. It came through somebody else I knew and they were like, oh, this guy's super legit.

Andy Stoll [00:13:23]:
You should talk to him. I was like, cool.

Joshua McNary [00:13:24]:
Well, that idea of connection through technology is central to everything you're doing with regards to building communities. There's this general ethos of technology making us further apart from. You hear that in TV commercials, just general concepts of how our society is operating. So a lot of what you're doing, and it sounds like how you're thinking about technology is the right way. The idea of using it to enable things in 3D in a way that actually leads to results. And maybe it is that you never actually meet the person overseas, but you're still creating a version of what you would have done in 3D if you had been in this with them. So maybe talk about that idea A little bit, and then also get into, you know, how you've seen this actually work when you're working within these entrepreneur communities that you're either helping to stand up or. Or helping to grow.

Andy Stoll [00:14:16]:
Yeah, absolutely. So in terms of building teams or creating companies or motivating groups of humans to do stuff, I. I love technology, but I take what I would call a relationship first approach, which is when you get a group of people together and you're like, hey, we're going to do this thing. We're going to start a company, we're going to launch a nonprofit, we're going to organize a music festival. The tendency, especially if you come from an American culture, is to just get at it. It's just to be like, okay, we're going to divide into committees, we're going to. Or whatever. Teams, and this group's going to do the marketing, and this group's going to do the operations, and this group is going to do the product development or the.

Andy Stoll [00:14:54]:
Whatever, you know, whatever it is that we want to do. And the tendency is to then just go. And what a relationship first approach says is, before we go get into the thing, let's actually spend a little bit of time to get to know each other, let's hear each other's stories, let's talk a little bit about sort of whether it's hopes and dreams or fears or whatever it is that what brings you to this project? Why do you want to. Why do you want to start this company? Why do you want to be part of this company? And the people that are very process oriented often complain. Like, why are we just talking like we should be doing? And what 23 years of community building, of company building has taught me is that you're actually doing a ton of stuff. You're laying a foundation of trust, understanding social capital, and alignment of the human. And it takes a little bit of time. Like.

Andy Stoll [00:15:47]:
Like, if I met you once and you said, could we. Could you be on my podcast? It would be a very different podcast than if you. After we'd been hanging out for a year and then we said, do a podcast, we know each other a lot better. Also, there's an element of trust that's there, which is I, you know, this is a little bit of cartoon version, but essentially, I know you have my best interest in mind when you're hosting me on your podcast, and you know that I have your best interest in mind. And we're going to be able to collaborate better because we trust each other and trust. One of my favorite Definitions of trust is that is that trust is created when your words match your actions. And so you say you're going to do something and then you do it. And that can only happen by repeated interactions over time.

Andy Stoll [00:16:30]:
And so whether it's formal, like we're in a company together and I'm your boss and you're my employee and you say you're going to do a thing and you do it and I say I'm going to do a thing and I do it. We build trust, but it's also true in communities. And I think about you and I met, I think originally, I'm trying to remember, but I think the original context was perhaps you were joining a co working space that I technically owned and at the time, customer. Right. It was like, hey, sounds about right. But as we got to know each other, we started doing things together and you helped me do things and I helped you do things. And over that time we built that trust. So I say all this stuff about trust on a podcast about technology and business because I think that is the table stakes.

Andy Stoll [00:17:06]:
That's the foundation for effective use of technology. So the work that we're doing today at the ship line involves somewhere in the realm of a thousand people. We have a leadership council of almost 20 people people. We have a core team of five. Those humans are operating in across the United States and actually a couple people globally. And we use Slack and Zoom and Google Docs and all the things that people probably use. But what is underneath all of that is actually somewhere between two and nine years of work to build relationships amongst those people. And we can move quick and we can get things done and we can do collaborative Google Docs that we build entire programs in because we spent the time building the relationships so that the technology was just the vehicle to accelerate that trust and collaboration into actually doing programs together.

Joshua McNary [00:18:01]:
The magical marketing that gets done around technology will say we could do it quickly, use the Google Doc to make the thing happen, this or that. But you're getting to the point that the tools are capable of that, but you're actually talking about the framework required to actually achieve that. The team. There's various ways to build a team. You've done it through this relationship building and these ongoing relationships you've had. But then there's also this idea of in a startup or maybe some of the businesses you're working with having to stand that up or create that culture within it. So I think that's what I'm hearing you say is that there's required framework that has to be in place first to best utilize to best maximize the technology then. And even though you're using standard tools, it sounds like that doesn't preclude you from being a superhero because you're using it in a really superhero type of way with that trust you.

Andy Stoll [00:18:47]:
That's definitely what I'm saying. One of the questions I have and maybe to ask you what you sense of it is there is something about meeting in person that I can't exactly put my finger on that allows people to build faster and better relationships. Even you and I were at a conference a couple weeks ago and seeing you for the 20 minutes that we did and had a quick beer chat felt more human than talking on Zoom. And I guess the question for you is I know a lot of companies that are now super global and remote and they've got developers here and staff over here. But what I a trend I have definitely seen is while Zoom and Slack and Google Docs and all that stuff allow all of that to happen almost like magic, they still get everybody together once or twice a year and in some cases it's a very expensive endeavor. And so there's a. Where I live in Omaha, there's a company called Workshop so I would call this late stage startup. They've raised a couple rounds of money.

Andy Stoll [00:19:44]:
They took their entire staff, which is global to a week long company retreat in Mexico. And it was interesting to talk some of the folks who did that because of how they had, they had, you know, fellow employees they had never met in person and they had worked together for years. But why, why does a company like Workshop or what is your sense of why a company like Workshop who use is a technology company uses vast arrays of technology, still says hey, we got to come together in person and we're going to invest. I'm sure because it's like 100 company a lot of money and getting those folks there. I mean is that a trend or a thing you see happening more and more, especially as companies become geographically unspecific?

Joshua McNary [00:20:26]:
I've seen it for sure in both my family and my community with the different scenarios. It reminds me of when I worked for other people. Now many years ago we would go do an annual planning type and maybe it wasn't to Mexico, but it was, you know, a nice place we'd go to and even though we were actually working in the same space, we would still go to this other place to have that change in context. And I know in my own work now I have a home office and I have my downtown office. And one of the reasons I like to go to the downtown office, even though it's not as much as I used to, is to have that community connection and talk to people, have that face to face time. So I guess I've seen exactly what you're talking about in different scenarios. But then I just know from my own experience there is that idea of, of connecting with people in a face to face manner, even if it's that short conversation. And oftentimes that does spark the opportunity to do something together, you know, a partnership or a referral or just, just helping some.

Joshua McNary [00:21:24]:
And that's part of why I'm doing this podcast, because I'm trying to reconnect or connect with new people, at least virtually. And maybe that leads to more in person conversations too.

Andy Stoll [00:21:33]:
It makes me think of, and you obviously remember this, one of the core principles of building entrepreneurial communities is this notion of engineering serendipity. It's like, how do you create the conditions where people come together and bump into each other? And oftentimes the serendipity happens not in the meeting, but afterwards when someone goes, oh yeah, I'm going to Atlanta with my wife on vacation. And then, oh, you go to Atlanta, I know someone in Atlanta, you should know. And, and those serendipitous moments happen. And what I would say is, especially in building the current endeavor I'm doing is serendipitous moments are less likely happening via email and slack and even zoom meetings, because zoom meetings are like, here we are, we have 30 minutes, we're going to do X. And so there is something about the sort of humanness together that allows that, I think, well, even just like having drinks or having a coffee. Right. It's just more encouraging of those serendipitous conversations that are essential not just to community, but also creativity and innovation.

Andy Stoll [00:22:29]:
It's like usually through those serendipitous moments, which is, you know, I always define as like when you find a thing you didn't know you were looking for. Happens a lot in my experience, a lot more in just like human gatherings or coworking spaces or coffee shops or bars or whatever people are chatting. And so again, it's not to say that technology isn't important, it's just that I think sometimes technology strips away those, those, those in between moments or the walks to the parking lot or whatever it is that we think of as is not efficient, but it is where those serendipitous happen and less likely to happen again in a, in a structured technology setting. But also could. I could see how. I could see people intentionally using Slack to create serendipitous moments amongst their.

Joshua McNary [00:23:11]:
They do. There's the fun channel or the, you know, whatever they. The Meme channel on Slack. Right. That somehow it's not the same but it's a version of what you're talking about. And it actually reminds me since we have this history together thinking back to that original co working space, I don't remember the name of it, but there was a web app, might even be like a Flash powered web app. So this has been a few years, but it was a. It was a music jukebox thing.

Joshua McNary [00:23:35]:
There was a couple different startups in that space and other entrepreneurs and we would all put onto that like what our playlist or what our requests were.

Andy Stoll [00:23:44]:
Yes.

Joshua McNary [00:23:44]:
Like kind of virtual dj. Whatever we were into that day we would put on there and then it would. We would all be playing that same playlist throughout this space. And I've seen versions of that I suppose over the years, but I remember that specific tool, I don't remember the name but I remember using it. And that seemed like added an element of what you're talking about. Serendipity. It created a chance for connection in that at least that time, that era that before Spotify.

Andy Stoll [00:24:10]:
And I think the connection is not work related. So it's not. We're not meeting because we got to talk about the KPIs or we're not meeting because we're about to hatchet deal. It's like, hey, you like Bruce Springsteen, I like Bruce Springsteen. And in that conversation you actually build rapport and trust and friendship which leads to again probably better deals and better work together on KPIs or whatever the point of generally meetings are, but it is creating the intentional space. And that is true. That's a good. That was such a fun app because today you just call it like a.

Andy Stoll [00:24:40]:
Basically a virtual jukebox. But it's how we co curated those playlists at the time. Again, that's when Flash was innovation and most of your listeners probably like I don't even want to get into it. But there was a point you couldn't animate on the web until Flash got invented. But now I just sound like an old guy.

Joshua McNary [00:24:57]:
But there's lessons to learn here. I mean there's lessons to learn that us old guys as well as those that are older and younger than us listening to this hopefully can take away from this. There's. There's versions of that now that they're going to look back at in 10 or 15 and say the same thing in the context community or technology or innovation. So I think it's worthy breaking up. And it relates to this idea that how do we weave technology into what we're doing in business and community to. To make things better and not let it become the drag that I think in the mainstream media it gets thought to be. Technology is thought to be.

Joshua McNary [00:25:32]:
Or even the AI conversation of the last years. Oh, you know, it's going to make us not think deep enough. We should look at it as a partner, not as a way of replacement. I think is the best way in that context.

Andy Stoll [00:25:43]:
So I do, I do some element of just like you're saying and we're saying is like, don't lose the humanness of business and technology. Because also with like the chatbot or the, or with the AI agents and stuff like, pretty soon you won't even need humans to do some things. But like, at the end of the day, humans like you and I like to build things, to make things, to start things, to build companies, to do all this. And, and I don't want to outsource the entire thing to technology, but technology is weaved into the work. I did have a funny experience a couple months ago. I showed up at a meeting and there was supposed to be four people there and it was me and three note takers and no humans. And so I wanted to be like. I was like, hey, note takers, are your people coming? They didn't say anything.

Andy Stoll [00:26:23]:
Then I said, hey, note takers, could you just have a meeting and figure out what we're going to do and just call me and they didn't say anything. But I do think it is going to get to that point where our agents, or whatever they're called, AI agents will meet and will have conversations to try to link things. But I think the point is to like extract the humans from the process. I think it's to let the humans do the part that they really enjoy. And for, for me, it's actually human relations and collaboration and creating, helping people achieve their dreams. Do I really want to lay out another mailchimp newsletter? No. So hopefully at some point the bots can take care of that so I can focus on the human parts of it that are enjoyable to me and make work more fun because I have spent a lot of time living in mailchimp the last year because I don't have a comms department. So it's like, well, Andy's got a newsletter and, well, useful still not quite fully automated yet.

Joshua McNary [00:27:15]:
The agents meeting with the agents meeting with the agents of us, our virtual copies of us in some way.

Andy Stoll [00:27:22]:
I will tell you this. So I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to meet with the vice president of product or to have a dinner with him of Microsoft, the Microsoft Corporation, about a couple months ago. And so obviously it was a group of us. We're having. So like, we're like, tell us about AI. And he said a lot of interesting things. But the thing that did struck me and I've been thinking a lot about as we build this current, this E ship alliance, is that organizations including Microsoft, are now creating staffing charts that include AI agents. And so the example would be you have a marketing team for your orgo company and you have the marketing vice president of marketing.

Andy Stoll [00:27:59]:
Maybe you have your marketing coordinator or your media buy or whatever, you know, whatever your company is. But that actually in those organizational charts you have, they are now writing in marketing AI agent who will have a set of tasks and the they will still report to another human, but that human, the agents may report to an agent which reports to a human. But it's been really interesting thinking about, okay, we're building this ESHIP alliance right now. It's one staff. The goal is to get to more staff. But as I'm writing out the sort of budgets and saying, okay, human's going to cost me this much and this is what I need them to do. Does that actually just be an AI agent? Should that be. It's going to cost probably, I would assume less, but I'm not actually sure.

Andy Stoll [00:28:42]:
But which tasks do we need a human and which task do we need an agent? And I think that gets super interesting. And then after talking to the gentleman from Microsoft, I was like, oh, it's not coming, it's here, it's happening now. And so now I've sort of set myself up on trying or set myself up to say, we got to go learn about these AI agents, what they are, how they work, how, how you build one, how you incorporate one. There's all sorts of questions around legal things and other things I was thinking about. But that's my new prompt from that dinner.

Joshua McNary [00:29:09]:
It's appropriate. It's a prompt because you'll be prompting these agents. Sorry, I gotta get it out myself.

Andy Stoll [00:29:15]:
Tell me about how I hire you.

Joshua McNary [00:29:19]:
But that, that's a great place to kind of start to wrap up here on our show today because it brings us to the cross section of the technology that we're currently facing at this time and the tools that will only continue to evolve and the. Someone listens to this, in a year or two, they're going to be at a different spot. But, but what won't change is this idea of how do we keep the human aspect in what we're doing in our tech now? And that has been a bit of a theme, I think, over the various recent episodes of this podcast. Different ways you spoke to it very specifically because that's what you do. That's your currency, is working with, to ultimately bring people together in a way to build businesses. And technology is a tool to help you do that. So I think the idea of how you're going to use AI agents to not replace the people, necessarily, not literally replace them, but maybe help you do more so to help more people, I think is very appropriate. Yeah.

Andy Stoll [00:30:10]:
Can I leave you with, I'll leave you with a prompt to consider. I don't have an answer to it either. But what I do know for sure after 25 years of my career is that in building teams and companies, trust, collaboration, social capital is, is central. And if you don't get the culture right of your company, you don't build the trust amongst your employees or employees and, and even your customers, like, good luck. You could have the best product, you could have an amazing website. But if, if the humans don't trust each other and the collaboration isn't there, good luck. And, and that's succeeding. My prompt is.

Andy Stoll [00:30:43]:
And this is like, I don't. I was just thinking about it kind of in my head as I was thinking about this is like, do I trust my ChatGPT? And the answer is I don't. It's helpful, it's helpful. But sometimes I'll say like, hey, could you do this? And then it gives it to me. I'm like, oof. Do. I mean, I know you hallucinate. I know you all do some weird things and the trust isn't there.

Andy Stoll [00:31:03]:
And so the question in the prompt is, is, is there? How do we increase our trust in some of these agents and some of these things that are not humans, they're virtual. But as I point out in the Microsoft example, they are becoming part of our team. And what role does trust play in working with an AI agent in business or in whatever endeavors folks. Folks are working in? I don't have an answer, but it's super interesting to think about what that even means. And how do you build trust with an AI?

Joshua McNary [00:31:31]:
Interesting. And we could probably talk for another half an hour hour just on that topic alone. So I'm going to bring us to the final question that I have to ask everybody on the show, which is what is one actionable tip that you would give business looking to better leverage technology?

Andy Stoll [00:31:48]:
It's kind of. It's a tip that is. Is a, is a bit of a lesson that I have learned in the last year of building this new national alliance, which is before you get to the what technology, what, what software, what app, what tool? Because there's so many fun ones out there. Oh, that is cool. That'll do. That is to before you go pick in your software and your app is to really step back and say, what am I actually trying to do right here as it relates to the growth of my company before you go get whisked away and all the cool stuff, especially the AI stuff that's out there. And multiple times in the last year, I got enamored by some software platform like that is sweet. And then built, bought it, used it, and then got halfway through it was like, this doesn't actually solve our problem.

Andy Stoll [00:32:38]:
This doesn't actually create the thing I needed to create. And now I've gone too far down the rabbit hole on this to pull it back. So before you get into choosing your platform and your cool new tech tool is to sit and be mindful with yourself and your company and your employees and say, what are we actually trying to do?

Joshua McNary [00:32:53]:
I couldn't say it better myself. Appreciate that, Andy. I love that message and I know I share that with many people I talked with. The why behind the technology is so important. Well, this has been great, Andy. Where can people find out more about you online?

Andy Stoll [00:33:05]:
Sure. So the best way to connect with me is on LinkedIn. Andy stole my name and I believe that's my the LinkedIn, the handle on LinkedIn. And if they want to learn more about the E Ship alliance can be found at eship.org E-S-I p.org, which is short for entrepreneurship.

Joshua McNary [00:33:21]:
Perfect. Thanks again for joining me today.

Andy Stoll [00:33:24]:
This is awesome. Thanks for having me.

Joshua McNary [00:33:25]:
All right, folks, that's it for today. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast on any of the popular directories. Tell a friend about what you've learned here on the biztech superhero and subscribe to my e newsletter@mcnarymarketing.com subscribe. Thanks for listening. I'm Joshua McNary and I hope you will join me again next time so you can learn how to become a biztech superhero. Bye now.