Tag: Josh Hotsenpiller

Ep 412: Leveraging Technology to Scale Your Business with Josh Hotsenpiller

AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode on the Influential Personal Brand. It’s AJ Vaden here and super excited to have my friend Josh on the show today. And I will give him a formal formal bio, a formal overview in just a second. But this interview is super special to both me and Roy and all of B B G because this is kind of the introduction of one of our strategic partners to our community and very high level. I’ll give you this little bit of background and then I promise I’ll introduce Josh . But Josh is the founder and c e o of this awesome company called Juno that happens to build apps. But that’s not where they started, right? It’s like they actually have way more technology interface than just this app thing that Juno does today. But our journey meeting Josh started about a year and a half ago when Rory and myself decided that we really wanted to have a more interactive mobile based component to, you know, the brand builders group community and our content organization, and really just consolidating things into one platform.
AJV (01:11):
And so I spent the better part of eight months pretty much trying out every single free demo that was available out there. Went very far down the line with some platforms that are great if you’re looking for that type of thing with like passion.io was one we went mighty Networks Pro is another. We went far down the lines, but we did a lot. And it kind of got down to the wire when I was about to sign on the dotted line with Passion io. And they revealed to me on this final call that they couldn’t do this one thing in our community that was really, really, really, really important to us. And about that time, very serendipitously very divinely one of our teammates, Jeremy said, Hey, you should check out this company called Juno. And I was like, what’s Juno?
AJV (02:00):
Long story short, now almost eight months later, we are about to go live with our own brand builders group app, the B b G app that has been totally created with Josh’s company, Juno, and their awesome team. And so Juan, I’m just really excited to have this conversation because I also know what it’s like to intimately work with your team and know your product very well, and be someone who is paying for your services and about to release it to our whole community. And so I just want, I’m super excited about it. And two, if you’re listening to this, it’s not just like I’m going to talk about how awesome it is and how excited I’m for our app to come. Although I am, I think the conversation that we’re gonna have today and why you wanna stick around for this whole episode and not cut out short cuz you think, you know, everything is three things. One, we’re gonna talk about AI and everybody has questions about ai. How should I use it? Should I be using it? Should I be afraid of it? Should I embrace it? What is it? Right? Regardless of what the questions are, we’re gonna talk about like, what are some things you need to know about ai and then specifically how can those be used within your community to help you be more effective and efficient? So I think that’s a conversation that is worthwhile to stick around for. Number two is do you need an app?
AJV (03:13):
, or do you just think you do? So I think we suffered from thinking we needed one until we realized, okay, what do, what can an app do and why do we need it? And, and also the prepared for the work that it takes to do that. So, do you need an app? Yay, nay. Or where do you, where do you fall in there? And then last but not least, just how do you leverage technology regardless of an app, but how do you leverage technology to actually deepen the roots within the communities that you’re building? Mm-Hmm. . So if y’all want to know the answers to any of those things, that’s why you should stick around. Now, let me formally introduce to you, Josh, a lot of words. So please meet Josh Pillar, he is the c o of Juno. He has over a decade of experience in the tech and connectivity industries.
AJV (03:57):
Lots in the a virtual event space, which I think he should also share some of his background that , cuz many of you will know some of the people and platforms that he has worked with, but also as a software engineer. He’s worked with people including Estee Lauder, GoPro, hp, United Nations you know, if you didn’t need more renowned brands, , I think you didn’t probably, you’re good there. But generally speaking we chose to go with Juno on our very first call with his team just to give a testament to who he is and the team he has. And they said well, just so you know that on every single call, the very first thing we wanna do is go over our core values. We wanna share with you our core values. And as they were going over our core values, our team was like texting behind the scenes going, did you send them our core values? As I swear I didn’t, I’ve never seen this before. I don’t know what they’re doing, . And their core values almost mimicked our core values to a T And that’s when we knew like, this is a team that we need to, to work with. So Josh, welcome to the show.
JH (04:56):
Goodness gracious. Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to share time and ideas and talk about the power of community and people.
AJV (05:04):
Yes. And I know you’re probably like, that’s the longest intro ever. You could have cut off four minutes, however, think this is gonna be a great conversation. So I’m gonna start in reverse order Okay. Of all of these questions. But before we get into that, can you just give people a little bit of insight of all of this awesome stuff that you’ve been doing for personal brands and companies behind the scenes. It’s like that bio does not do you justice whatsoever in terms of all the things that you’ve actually done. So help our audience get to know you.
JH (05:35):
Yeah. You know, I my bio is kind of over the river and through the woods. You know, you, I I quick bio grew up, the son of a preacher man was in that world, didn’t really know what else to do. I went and got my divinity degree in New York, right outside of New York City. Started a church at 23, grew up to about a thousand people. Started to feel like, gosh, like there’s what is, what would I do if I wasn’t doing this? Mm-Hmm. , and it’s probably a lot of your listeners why they found themselves where they are. They probably found themselves going, wait a minute, what would I do if I wasn’t doing this? And passion and vision and purpose begin to evolve in your heart, the listener. And you said, I’m gonna go be an expert in this field and I’m gonna teach people to be great in it, and I’m gonna expand this vertical.
JH (06:25):
And for me, it was a similar thing. I, what would I do if I wasn’t a pastor? And, and maybe you can relate to this as a listener, you grew up with a family that was kind of doing a family business, if you will. Mm-Hmm. You know, maybe it was my dad was in lawn care, or an engineer, or what restaurant business, whatever it was. And then maybe you go, wait a minute, maybe that’s not my story. Mm-Hmm. And so me and a me and a buddy, when we were 27, 28 years old decided we wanted to mobilize people to change the world. I know that sounds kind of whatever but we didn’t even know there was a space out there called the corporate social responsibility space. And so right during the 2007, eight 2007 and eight housing mortgage crisis, we launched a do good platform called Profits for Purpose that helped mobilize employees to give back time and money.
JH (07:11):
And yeah, we grew it up. We had over a million global employees accessing the platform. Those, a lot of those brands you mentioned, GoPro, Estee Lauder, staples, N F L, all sorts of groups. I always just believe in the power of community. And so I begin to build bra products for brands all around mobilizing people to do something. Hmm. So whether it was gl hp, we built the global sales enablement tool that to this day they still license and use it from one of my companies, the un they have boots on the ground all over this world helping fight genocide, hunger, poverty, and they weren’t able to mobilize those people. So we built a platform to mobilize ’em. And ultimately, my vision has always been how do you mobilize people to do amazing things and whatever that might be. And that’s the power of community.
JH (07:59):
I mean, that really is what it is. And so to me, we always had that big vision of how do we mobilize people? Tech was just part of it, right? It was just a thing. We always say, we’re not a tech company, we’re a values company. Tech is just a, is a, is a tool that you use to enable a vision. I love that. Yeah. And I think when you think about it bigger than that, you kind of missed the point and you mission drift and you kind of forget why you’re doing what you’re doing. And so for me, it’s everybody listening has a vision, has a community, has a vertical they care about. And the question is, what are the tools that we need to create radical change? And so tech has been that tool for me over the last 12, 15 years.
JH (08:41):
It’s, I’ve traveled the world, literally worked with amazing global brands, worked with a lot of really neat individual people, some amazing people. Like maybe some of your listeners know Lisa Turkers. We built her app. She’s one of the most phenomenal leaders I’ve never been around. We built Catalyst was a big group we built for a ton of their people. So we were in a lot of those faith-based spaces fortune 100 spaces. We’ve done it all from soup to nuts. And we’ve learned a lot from folks that have said, Hey, I’ve got an audience of 2000. You know, when we launched Lisa’s a app, I’ll never forget it. We trended number one in the app store for three days, which is an incredible thing to do for downloads. And you think about, you hear these things, oh my gosh, we trended in the app store. We did put 2 million people, active users on that app. That’s
AJV (09:29):
Amazing.
JH (09:30):
So, which remind me to come back to that because I think that there’s a, there’s a, there’s a strategic message I want to share about how and why to use technology. And I’m gonna use, I’ll use that as a use case cause I think it’ll help everybody listening. But yeah, we, we found that technology was a great tool. It was a great utility, which we’ll talk about in a minute to execute a bigger purpose. So that’s kind of what’s brought me here. I’ve done TEDxs, I’m a US state department, global ambassador for entrepreneurship. Oh man, it’s just been a wild ride all from just being the son of a preacher man. So it’s been a fun time. Yeah. Know
AJV (10:02):
What, you should really set smaller goals, you know, it’s like really do less Josh. You know, I love that though. I’m actually reading the Circle maker Uhhuh. Yes. Myerson. And one of the things I love, he says that setting big goals honors God. Mm-Hmm. And I love, cause the bigger you set them and the less likely they are to happen, when they do happen, then you know who gets the glory and the it’s cool. They are, the more that you can honor and glorify God. And I just, I think that’s so cool. And I love this idea. It’s like, you know, I hear people say all the time, you know, it’s like, oh, social media’s bad. Oh, technology’s gonna be in this generation. It’s ruining our kids. And it’s like, no, I agree with you. It’s like, no, technology’s a tool, just like social media is a tool. Food is a tool, right? Yeah. It’s like our cars are tools. No one says cars are gonna be the death of our generation. Right.
JH (10:56):
Right. Right.
AJV (10:56):
They’re tools. Right. And it’s like they can be used for good or bad. It just all has to do with the intention. So why don’t we just kind of start there. It’s like you said this, it’s come back to like how and why to use technology. And I think that’s a good general place to start.
JH (11:13):
Cool. You know what’s funny about my mom and, and, and dad, they’re getting into that fourth quarter stage of their life. And I, I have a, I have a ritual. My folks live in Anaheim Hills, orange County. And so I have a ritual that every night I’m there, I drink whiskey with dad. And every morning I take walk with mom mm-hmm. . And so that’s kind of our thing. So I I, every single time my mom and I walk five miles together and it’s just a matter of time until this world isn’t what it used to be, it’s apart. Now he’s gonna have to pull her back and say, wait a minute. And I, and I think here’s the thing that I would say, and then, we’ll, I’m gonna get further nette, it’s not going away. Hmm. Okay. So you can throw your hands up in the air and you can call it evil, and you can go down that rapid trail as deep as you want.
JH (11:58):
It’s not going away. And so now the question is, and so I raised 13 million from Insights Partners. It’s the largest software only BC in the world. They have 200 billion under management. And I, through total random Niff God we raised from their co-founder, a guy named Jerry Murdoch, who Richard Branson officiated his wedding. If that puts any context into like, you know, I’m raising money from this guy that like literally chases where the snow is with his private jet to extreme ski. Like they make movies out of these people. Yes. And I remember when he was working with me on raising capital, positioning the brand, he kept saying, technology’s a utility. It’s a utility. The most powerful technology tools are utility. There’s something that you can get use out of mm-hmm. Hmm. . And so you think about it like, what apps do you use a lot?
JH (12:52):
Well, I use my app, my, my Maps app. In fact, now it’s to the point when when I get into my car, it tells me it, it goes, you’re either going to the Crosby Club, which is where I golf, you’re going to Church of rb. That’s where our family goes to church. You’re going to star it knows based on time where you’re, where it’s Spotify is like, Hey, it’s Friday. It’s your country mix. It’s been a long week. Like, here’s some new songs that we think you’re gonna, like, what’s happening. Technology is becau it’s a utility. It’s a tool to make something happen and make your life easier. And so when you think about technology, you think about it from a utility standpoint. How is this a utility to help my community do something they already wanna do better, faster, more efficiently? I want to drive to this location.
JH (13:44):
This map’s gonna say, this is how you should get there in the fastest way. I want to listen to music. This app’s gonna tell me the music I don’t even know existed. I’m gonna love that in the fastest way. That’s what tech is. It’s a utility. And so you think about your community and your audience. So Lisa Turkish has told you I was going to use her as an example. She had, she’s brilliant. She had this idea, she’s like, I wanna do the first five. I wanna own the first five minutes of all of my audience’s day. Mm-Hmm. , which I love that vision to you. Like, I want that time. That’s the time I want. And I wanna build a product that says, in the first five minutes of your day, I’m gonna help you do what you want to do. Get your mindset right, focus on the Lord, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
JH (14:28):
But it was, it’s the most utility, one of the most utility apps we’ve done. And it’s, it’s still to this day, I think averages a couple million people on it actively, which is phenomenal to think about. But you gotta look at your audience and go, what is it that you are trying to accomplish? And what is the, the hammer and the nails and the screwdriver and the wrench that you need to do that? Mm-Hmm. . And if you can think about it that way, you can start thinking about utility. And again, do I need an app? I don’t know. It’s the wrong question to ask. The question is, what does my audience need to accomplish?
AJV (15:06):
So good.
JH (15:07):
That’s the question you solve that maybe you need an app, maybe you need an airplane, maybe I don’t know what you need. But the problem is we always think technology is gonna solve the problem. Oh, the problem. We haven’t even defined
AJV (15:21):
. Right. Wise words there, Josh. It’s like, that’s so true. It’s like, I totally agree. It’s like often we jump to it because it’s what’s trendy versus actually going, wait, do I even have a problem this could solve? I don’t do I even have a problem? Don’t know. But everyone else is doing it, so I I should do it too. Yeah. And instead of trying to solve problems, we just jump on bandwagons
JH (15:44):
And it’s just, and and all of a sudden we’re like, my app sucks. The app, the company sucks. And you’re like, do I suck? I mean, who knows? Every, maybe everybody does. Maybe nobody does. Maybe we just didn’t identify a problem. Yeah. I was, I’ll never forget, I was sitting in the CEO’s office of a, I don’t know, me, half a billion dollar company. It wasn’t huge, but you know, big enough. And I was sitting in his office and he goes, Hey, I’m, I’m looking at signing this contract for this app, but I’m staring at this proposal going, I would never use this. And I said, my God, I’d hope not. I’d hope you’re too busy to use this, this you are not our target audience.
AJV (16:20):
Yeah.
JH (16:22):
You know? And he goes, oh my gosh, I never even thought about that. The question is not would you use this? The question is, would your audience use this again, icp, you know, our ideal customer profile, who is this person? Would they use it? And so when we look at your community, we go, what does your community need? Some of it might need leadership coaching, some of it might need emotion. I was just got off this podcast, AJ in this group called Happy. It’s phenomenal. They all they are is a listening for hire company. They’re not trained psychologists. You literally, at scale, they’re creating listeners. I love
AJV (17:00):
This . Which,
JH (17:01):
Which I can, I can open this, I can open this up to our AI conversation in a minute. But I was just on this podcast, these guys out of Manhattan, and they asked me to come on as an exec. How do you listen as an executive? And they go, we we’re literally scaling listening. Hmm. And you, their audience just needs somebody to listen. So it determines the type of app you build, the utility that you use. Is it just audio streaming? Is it video? My audience needs to be heard. Yeah. Well, my audience needs to be leadership coached. My audience needs to understand you know new law term, whatever it is. You gotta start with that mm-hmm. and, and not worry about do I need an app? Worry about your community.
AJV (17:48):
Hmm. That’s so good. And you know, it’s we had at this conversation, a good friend of mine has a custom app creation company called App name’s Amanda Mariachi. She lives in Denver. And you know, I had her on the podcast, I don’t know, a while back. And one of the questions that, you know, she had said is, the problem with building custom apps is that at the end of the day, it’s always gonna be more expensive than what you wanted it to be. It’s never gonna have a hundred percent of the functionality that you want. Sure. And somehow it’s always my fault, right. As the developer, as the builder, and Yep. Said, the truth is, is an app only works if you know exactly what you want it to do. Mm-Hmm. , and most people don’t. So they spend all the time during creation trying to figure out what should this app do, which is why it’s always over budget.
AJV (18:38):
It’s over time. And at the end of the day, we’re like, we gotta call it, and then we finish an incomplete project. And she goes, yep. That’s often what an app building experience looks like. And it’s why we say no. It’s like, if you don’t know exactly who your audience is, what your business model is, if you can’t tell us that in the beginning, then we won’t work with you. And it’s exactly what you just said. It’s, it’s not do I need an app? It’s, could an app solve a problem that my audience has, because I know what the problem is and I know who my audience is.
JH (19:07):
And that’s how you grow an audience. I mean, it really is. It’s how, you know, it’s like anything. I mean, let’s go back to this listening group. You know, they, one of the things they brought me on, you know, they’re like, Josh, how many times do your exec, you know, your, your people just, I just wanna be heard. I just, I just wanna be heard. And, and I’ll tell a great story when I was I remember as the rise of Millennialism comes into the marketplace, and as a, as an ex, you know, GenX guy I’m wired a little bit different than millennials, but I’ll never forget this one guy came into my office and he goes we’re talking, and, and he goes, oh, I gotta tell you about this new company. I started, one of my employees in the middle of the day, , he says, he says, Josh, you gotta tell about this company. I started and I go, tell
AJV (19:52):
Yeah. Tell me, tell me
JH (19:54):
You, you started a company. And he goes, yeah. So he kind of tells him about it. And I go, when, when do you work on it? And he goes, no. All throughout the day, I’m like, so wait a minute, when I’m employing you to run my company, your starting one working on yours. Mm-Hmm. . And he’s like, yeah. And you know what, to this day, Taylor still works with me because guess what? Taylor gets his work done. Yeah. And Taylor crushes at his job. And Taylor just has the ability to be amazing. And my point in telling you that story is learning to listen and not defend and not define, and not all these things allows you to see a bigger picture and a bigger opportunity. And I think for a lot of us who probably have lost the discipline of listening to our audience, and we’ve become so conditioned to tell, especially as thought leaders, right?
JH (20:45):
Like, we feel responsible, like, yeah, you are here because I’m a thought leader in a space and, and I am the one you need to listen to. And so I’m gonna make a bunch of crap up and hope it’s right and every, you know, whatever else, right? And like, wait a minute, the art of listening is going to educate you on how to lead. Remember, you’re being paid to lead not to talk. And so a huge part of what you can do in leading is listening so that you know how to lead mm-hmm. . So I think going back to that from a product standpoint, it’s like, Hey, what are we trying to do here? And then what utilities, what hammer and nail and screwdriver and wrench do we need to do that faster and better so that we can, so that all of our audience comes back and goes, oh my gosh, you guys are amazing, yada, yada, yada. Anyway, I can be redundant. I love
AJV (21:33):
That. But I think that’s, you know, we can apply that same conversation, not just to technology or an app, but, and anything, right. It doesn’t, it’s like even starting out, it’s like, I was just, as you were thinking as you were talking, I was thinking about, you know, the journey that we take customers on and brand builders group, and it’s like what we call finding your brand d n a are these six components. It’s the foundation of your personal brand. And one of those six components is what’s your business model? And are other words, what’s your primary business model? How do you make money right now? And then what do you want it to be in the long term? And it’s so interesting that for most people, most of that decision happens in a very small group setting that involves none of their clients. Mm. Mm-Hmm. , right? And it’s like, we’re always like, you don’t have to ask an abstract question, just go ask your audience. Right? It’s true though. So go ask who your clients are. Do a focus group, just call up one of your former customers. Walk this through with them. And it’s like, for some reason, I think a lot of us feel like, well, we can’t ask our customers. We’re the ones who’s supposed to know. It’s like, oh, no,
JH (22:42):
I don’t know where that came from. I’m supposed to know when you’re supposed to listen. That’s what you’re supposed to do. That’s what you, that’s what you’re supposed to do. You’re not supposed to know. Mm-Hmm. supposed to listen. Then you’ll know. And I’ll tell you a story. When, when I started Juno it was in the height of the, I mean, the pandemic, literally lockdowns happened here in California in February. By March we were designing wireframes to go into the virtual world. Why I had no interest in it. Multiple clients from Michael Hyatt company to hp to others said, we don’t want another platform. We love your community platform. We love your learning platform. We don’t want another one. Could you create an all in one solution? Mm-Hmm. , could you create a solution where we could do virtual roundup meetups, et cetera, et cetera.
JH (23:33):
We could do online learning, credentialing, where we could do community. Could you create that? And I remember I went back to my, my guys, I was like, guys, the customers asking us to create an all OnOne solution, we should do it. Now we’re in conversations with a big partnership with the company, and I was talking to their cfo F and they’re, I don’t know, they’re probably a half a billion dollar company. They’re worth multiple billions of dollars. And, and I said to ’em, I said, you know, it’s interesting when we got into this, I knew virtual only was gonna commoditize and evaporate. And so we needed a, we needed a more holistic solution. And he sheepishly laughed and said, we bought a company that we watched evaporate from 21 million in revenue to zero. Think about that. 21 million in, in, in, in, in revenue to zero.
JH (24:19):
Wow. Was I some savant that knew that I know that. Or did I listen to that? Mm-Hmm. , I listened. And then all of a sudden everyone’s like, you’re so smart. You, you saw where things were going. I was like, they asked. Yeah. I built it. You know? And so I think it’s a great leadership and, and this works really well in technology. It works in any business decision you’re gonna make because, oh, I’ll throw a bunch of marketing dollars, I’ll throw a bunch of tech dollars, I’ll put a bunch of r and d dollars maybe. Mm-Hmm. this conversation is, is is, you know, agnostic of, of variable set. It’s, it’s a fundamental way of leading your business that says, I’m gonna listen, then I’m gonna create utility.
AJV (25:02):
I love that. I think that’s such a good reminder. Like I said, this is not just for technology or apps. This is just building your business, growing your business, leading your team. Listening, listening matters. Surprise. Right.
JH (25:14):
I know. Shocking.
AJV (25:16):
Surprise. Now on that, I loved what you said earlier, and I wrote this down, is, you know, it’s like technology really at its best use is helping people do things more efficiently. Do them where it’s, you know, easier, faster, smarter. Mm-Hmm. . And I think that’s where this conversation of AI has kind of entered in. And I’m coming off of the heels of spending two days with our community here in Nashville. We had one of our quarterly mastermind meetups this past Thursday and Friday. And inevitably this question always comes up of, are you guys using it? How are you using, what do you think about it? And yeah, sure. It’s like, of course I’m using it. Yeah.
AJV (25:59):
We, we, it’s like, and I love, and I don’t remember who told us this, but this was some interview that we had with someone who is smarter than us who said technology is only scary when you don’t know how it applies to you. Mm-Hmm. , right? Mm-Hmm. . So what you need to do as quickly as possible is figure out how can this help you and then embrace it. And so it’s like, well of course we’re using it. It’s like one, it’s, cuz I know all of you are gonna ask us are we using it? And how are we using it isn’t helpful. But here’s what I have found is like it is doing exactly what you said, it is helping me be smarter, move faster, and get things done in a more efficient manner. That’s right. And that is incredibly helpful and useful. Right?
JH (26:43):
It’s, so let’s go back to what we said. It’s not going away. So you can get scared and you can throw your hands up. You can talk about living in an al you know, an alternate community that doesn’t do parallel communities. I hear people talk about this all the time and I’m like, you know, all, all the conservatives will live over here and everybody else will live over here. We’ll just live in parallel societies. You know, it’s not gonna happen. Mm-Hmm. or I’m not gonna be on that ranch. I’m not, I’m not interested that I wanna live my life. It’s not going away. Let’s talk about instead of starting with fear, let’s, we’re always scared when we can’t see the end. Right? And, and that’s really where it is, right? It’s like you could walk down an alley and it’s dark and it’s super scary.
JH (27:27):
You could walk down an alley in the middle of the day, you don’t thinking of it because you can’t see where it’s going. And that’s where we’re right now with ai. We don’t know where it’s going. And instead of seeing the good of it, the brain is wired to protect itself. And so we are seeing all the bad, right? Mm-Hmm. , I was just listening to the president of Microsoft talk about how AI is now mapping against pancreatic cancer, which is the leading death of men. Wow. And it can actually study patterns in your body to know if that’s forming. Cuz it’s almost impossible to know early stage pancreatic cancer. But AI is, is is being able to do that. Well, that’s kind of cool if you’re a dad or a grandpa or you know, you wanna lib, it’s kinda a cool thing. So there’s that.
JH (28:11):
Gimme the other thing, and I’ve been saying this to my wife for years ago, Kim, our boys, I have two boys, crews and Crosby, they’re 1113. I said, they are gonna have EQs through the roof because that is that, or they’re gonna be plumbers because those are gonna be the two jobs the future is gonna have. It’s gonna be working class trade jobs because you can’t machine learn that or it’s gonna be soft skills. And my mind bent this morning, I didn’t even, I got asked to be on this executive that listened thing from a big c e outta of Manhattan. And so I was like, yeah, sure, I’ll do that Ben, no problem. I get on and all of a sudden this guy gets on, he’s a c e of happy, which is this listening thing. And I’m like, dude, I’ve been saying for years future jobs are gonna get professional huggers listeners.
JH (28:58):
Like, because you automate these tasks. Yeah. What’s left? It’s hu it’s human need. Mm-Hmm. . And so if, if the future was human felt need jobs, well that’s so weird. Yeah. Well guess what? Sitting behind a computer that didn’t exist back in the 18 hundreds would’ve seemed kind of weird. Yeah. So we don’t know what the future job world looks like, but like we always reinvent the future of work and that’s how life works. And so I think we look at it and go, wait a minute, if this tool what it can help us with predictability with speed to outcome, what it does, it begins to open up our lives to more opportunities and more things that we can do. And so when I look at ai, I go, look, it’s not going away. It is gonna be a betterment tool. Is it scary? And is is there, is is there, is there gonna be evil actors involved in it? Yeah, there is. Mm-Hmm. . Yeah, there is. And so was it with
AJV (30:02):
Other things in life? Yeah.
JH (30:03):
It doesn’t go away. I mean, do you remember, I don’t remember. It wasn’t there, but when the TV came out, I remember my parents saying, and I don’t, I mean I was raised like very religious rights. I don’t know how many did folks listen in, have a religious background or not. But this was how, you know, Satan was finally giving able speak to the whole world and introduce the mark of the beast or whatever. But tv here’s how it was radio first, then tv, and then the internet. And you go, okay, we can doom and gloom till we’re dead in the face mm-hmm. , or we can understand that, that how are we gonna use these to strengthen our communities Yeah. To mobilize our people for the things we care about. And I didn’t mean to digress there, but I just mean we can, we can get as scary as we wanna get about something.
AJV (30:44):
Totally.
JH (30:45):
Or we can flip the light on and say it’s, it’s a hallway, it’s an hour. I mean
AJV (30:49):
Yeah. I liken that too. It’s like, it does not matter what it is in life. It can be used for good or bad relationship. It’ll be, are healthy and unhealthy. Food is good and not good. It’s real and artificial. It’s like we can make anything good, bad, and honestly we can make anything bad. Good. That’s right. Bad is where I just, I had this podcast interview earlier today with a gentleman named Damon West and I loved what he said. He goes, the future is defined in only one of two ways, fear or faith. Mm-Hmm. fear is you have these, you know, doom and gloom, like something bad is gonna happen and you’re, you know, have all these things associated with that or it’s, something’s good gonna happen and it’s faith. It’s just fear or faith. It’s good or bad. And I think, you know, if I, when I sit here and think about like, some of the perks of technology and AI and in, you know, in this particular case, like we chose to build this app with Juno for two main reasons.
AJV (31:47):
It was we needed to consolidate Yeah. All of the different platforms into one. And that was something that our community has been saying for years and it’s something our team has been saying for years is when do we have to stop logging into one more place? Yes. Yes. And it’s cause like we were scrappy when we were building this. We don’t have investors, we’ve been self-funded and it’s like, well it’s not the best but it works for now and we’ll upgrade when it’s time to upgrade. And so it was consolidation and then organization. Mm. It was consolidation and organization of, you know, we just believe like regardless if we’re right or wrong, this is our belief is that people don’t pay for information anymore. Hmm. No, it’s for free. They don’t but they do pay for organization.
JH (32:33):
Mm.
AJV (32:33):
And they pay for application. Yeah. But it’s like, we don’t pay for information. You can get that for free, but often you don’t get it in the right order. And so you’re trying to piecemeal it together and you can do the right things in the wrong order and it will blow up in your Sure.
JH (32:47):
No doubt.
AJV (32:48):
And so that was our whole thing is like we need to consolidate and organize and then our team is the one who helps to apply and it would like, and that was like, that is why we built this app. And you know, one of the reasons we chose Juno is because of some of the AI components. Yeah. That did not exist in the other platforms. And yeah, one of the things that our community wants is they want a little bit of this done for them. It’s like, I don’t want to have to tell your team who I want to be introduced to. I wanna log in and I want someone to tell me
JH (33:21):
Like exactly
AJV (33:22):
Based on your profile, here are the five other members that you should connect with in this community. That’s so
JH (33:28):
Cool. Yeah. And let me share with, with our listeners, like how I kind of architect that engineered it because it’s gonna go back to the utility. So I created this thing called human interest modeling and, and what it was when it said, when you onboard onto our platform, we want you to declare what you’re interested in. Mm-Hmm. . So think about this through the lens of your brand. Whoever’s listening, I’m interested in organizational leadership speaking you know pipe fitting, I don’t know, whatever it is that people do, I’m, I’m declaring to the platform, this is what I’m interested in. However, the platform has all sorts of stuff. And then you get in there and you start discovering there is other things that you’re interested in. Why is that little search, that little magnifying glass on Instagram? How many of us listened to flip through there?
JH (34:19):
Next thing you know, we’re on a rabbit trail of a yacht and the next thing you know, it’s more yachts and it’s golf. And next thing you know, if you look at that now that’s a complete profile of what you’ve discovered that you’re interested in. Not declared mm-hmm. . But the more you declare it, the more it fills it. So declared and discovered tags builds it and then it brings three things, content, experiences and people. And so we begin to say, Hey, we want you to tell us what you’re interested in. We took it to another level, not another level. Your platform does this where we say, we ask this question, what do you think you could give to this community? And what would you like to learn from this community? And the cool thing is like somebody comes in and then we help them select, right?
JH (35:05):
So it’s like, oh, I think I could really help with public speaking with research papers. I’m just making stuff up. And then somebody else comes on and goes, gosh, I’m the worst at research. I need to try to, I need to try to learn that. And all of a sudden the system’s like, Hey gosh, and AJ you guys should connect cuz AJ’s awesome at public speaking and you wanna get good at it and you’re really good at research and Jill over here really wants to get good at it. And all of a sudden, what is that? That’s utility that’s valued. To your point, that’s organization, that’s ai. Mm-Hmm. , that’s basic AI modeling where you’ve got variable steps that are weighted, that are learning the profiles of people and bringing them together. That’s, that’s called generative learning. Generative ai, you’ve heard that term. It’s generating information so that it can make it smart. That’s what it’s doing. Why would we not want that? No. I want to get back on to some forum and not know who’s talking what and everything else and No, it makes sense. It makes your life better.
AJV (35:59):
Yeah. It is. Back to, it’s like, and under, in order to use it, you have to understand it. You don’t have to know all of it. But it’s, I know that there’s a million ways that I could be using AI right now. I’m using it in five different ways, but it’s changing my life. It is giving time, back, minutes back that I can reinvest in other things that are important. Saving us money. It’s like there’s so many things that, you know, just to that point of it’s, you know, you only fear what you don’t understand. Even if it’s at the micro level of like, okay, I understand how I can use it for this one thing. Somebody is Yeah. And it, it that’s very much, you know, this conversation around technology in general and the app. And before I forget, cause I know we’re almost outta time if you guys are listening and you’re like, okay, I like this technology conversation and I’m curious about this app and that is something that I, you know, I, I do wanna explore, I wanna tell you guys where to go to learn about Juno.
AJV (36:51):
So you can go to juno live.com, that’s their website. So juno live.com. When you’re talking to their team, tell ’em that you heard about it through this podcast. We’re trying to do a really good job of tracking how we connect people. Don’t be surprised if there’s an AI component to this podcast in the near future that will do that for you automatically. That this is this one way to get connected to Juno. But Josh, if they wanna connect with you and they just want to follow you and learn more about you and learn from you, where’s the best place for them to go?
JH (37:23):
Yeah. I mean obviously jump on Instagram or LinkedIn. I mean those are awesome places to hang out. I do a a weekly email called Monday Motivation through I think josh hoen piller.com. You can sign up for it. I think we still have landing page up. I have a few thousand people that get that weekly. And it’s just honestly just my musings on leadership and life and, and things I’m learning on, on how to be a better listener, how to be a better leader how to build more utility in everything that we do. So yeah, come hang out, let’s get to know each other.
AJV (37:55):
Yes, and I’ll put all of that in the show notes too. And there’s so much to Josh that we did not cover today. This was so much about technology, but he has this awesome mastermind. You’re doing coaching, you’re doing so many, you’re speaking like you do so much more than what we talked about today. So we’ll have to have you come on another time to talk about, you know, part two of all things Josh, and you know, I just so appreciate you coming on and talking about this and for you guys listening one I just encourage you to, to learn more if, like, if you are trying to explore how do I use technology or an app to deepen the, you know, relationships in my community and isn’t app the right thing that I could just personally say, we’re paying for Juno, we’re using Juno. Highly recommend it. Their team has been awesome to work with. So you just get major accolades from our team, you, but then more than that it’s just to explore how technology can help you be better at what you do. Yeah. And I think that’s a really important thing. So Josh, thank you. Thank you for your time today. Thanks for your wisdom. Loved having you on. Oh,
JH (38:56):
Thank you. Pleasure was mine. And love everything you guys are doing and can’t wait to get to know you even more.
AJV (39:01):
Likewise. And then everyone else who’s listening, stay tuned for the recap episode that will be popping up later this week. We’ll see you next night.
JH (39:10):
Talk to you soon.