Entrepreneurial Empire
Learn the fundamentals of where you are in business and how to scale with your host Jacqueline. Your business will go through many stages, and every stage will have it's own set of requirements. Let's unravel the journey ahead together and find strategic solutions that will help you conquer it all.
Entrepreneurial Empire
AI For Entrepreneurs, Simplified
The ground under business just moved. We sat down with AI engineer Bill Evans to map the real shifts entrepreneurs, operators, and students can act on right now, without the hype, and without the doom. From retrieval-augmented generation that turns your company’s knowledge into precise answers, to agentic models that search, check, and revise their own work, we unpack how to turn AI into leverage rather than noise.
Bill explains why the big-company advantage is shrinking and how small teams can punch above their weight with better prompts, cleaner data, and a clear definition of “done.” We get practical about where AI is already deflationary, drafting contracts, reviewing code, editing books, producing songs and what that means for pricing, margins, and access. We also dig into the human edge: authenticity that doesn’t sound like a bot, judgment that sets constraints, and leadership that makes the right call when the model gives you ten plausible options.
We don’t dodge the hard parts. Deepfakes and misinformation are rising, and security teams aren’t the only ones using language models. Bill shares a balanced path forward: watermarking, provenance, and governance alongside AI-hardened defenses that will ultimately make systems safer. Then we zoom out to the frontier: self-driving cars reshaping commutes and cities, humanoid robots folding laundry today and building homes tomorrow, and the real promise of AGI-level reasoning to accelerate science, from drug discovery to materials design.
If you’re building a company, growing a career, or guiding your kids through a faster future, this conversation gives you a playbook: learn the tools, practice the operator’s mindset, add your voice, and ship with care. Enjoy the episode, then hit follow, share it with a friend who needs a nudge into AI, and leave a review with the one capability you’ll master next.
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Welcome to the Entrepreneurial Empire Podcast. This is the place where you can find business and career strategies, techniques, and real life success journeys of individuals who have built their businesses to the million-dollar revenue mark and beyond. I'm Jacqueline Hernandez, life coach and business development consultant. I have worked with startups, Fortune 100 companies, network marketing, direct sell organizations, churches, nonprofits, and government agencies, all to become the authority experts in their industry. Lead with people and scale their revenue. Let's get started. Hi, entrepreneurs. Okay, I'm really excited about this episode today. Our guest today, we are going to be diving into the biggest shifts of our time artificial intelligence, AI. So my guest today is Bill Evans. He is one of those rare minds who's working behind the scenes on projects so advanced that we can't even talk about. Okay, so we're talking AI. He's an engineer, he does software, and I'll give you a little hint. He's working on all AI products. So this is gonna be really amazing topic today. Um, he also is reshaping industries, helping with the AI that's reshaping industries, jobs, and what the next generation needs to do to prepare. Um, not only that, fun fact, he is a dad of five and a beautiful wife. So congratulations and thank you uh for joining us today, Bill.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_01:All right. Well, Bill, let's dive right in. Why don't you tell our audience just a little bit about you and your background? Because I mean, you're a total genius in your in your own right. So tell them a little bit about what you're doing.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so uh just a little bit about some of the AI stuff I'm doing. I've uh I've been uh trying to keep up on top of all AI for the last uh 10 years or so, and uh it's changed quite a bit. And I would say up until about three years ago, I would say I was on top of everything. Uh now it's moving so quickly, uh I think it's impossible to keep up on top of everything. Um but uh some of the things that I'm doing is so for my work, uh I am bringing in AI technology. Uh, one of the AI technologies is known as a rag system, and that's basically taking your Chat GBT. And uh ChatGBT doesn't understand your business, doesn't know all the data, the information in it. So a rag system will retrieve all your internal documents and use those to answer your questions. So now it understands the nature of your business, the workings of your business, and even your process flows. And so that's one thing I'm implementing at my work. And then uh I like to play around with it. Uh, I got a lot of home projects. Uh, my wife, she's actually starting another business, and uh so we're so we're so I'm using AI to to do a whole bunch of little things on that. Uh, and it's it's quite exciting. And then, of course, I like to dabble with the uh image generators, the video generators, uh, and even song generation is is pretty neat. You can uh create your lyrics and then have it help create the uh song.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I love your songs that you were putting out on Facebook too, by the way. Also, just want to touch uh a little bit about what you're saying. Um, even last year, no, two years ago now, when I was getting ready to launch my book, you had sent me an AI to actually give me critical review on my book. So I ran my whole entire book through it, and that was so amazing to hear the feedback that was given to me from that AI uh software.
SPEAKER_00:Do you remember? Yeah, I I I I actually think um that's one of the most powerful ways to use it is uh using AI to review your work and and you know just raise questions and concerns and help you improve what what you're already doing so well.
SPEAKER_01:So, Bill, when I think about AI and I think about the technology that's happening here, I mean, remember when we went from the shift to online and it really changed like consumers' buying habits and how we uh purchase things, right? So nobody, I mean, it was closing because of online services and the transition that happened with online, it really took the world to a different era, right? Um, a lot of stores, uh name brand stores that couldn't keep up. So, like even uh if you remember the bookstore Borders, they shut down, Toys of Rush shut down. A lot of these major companies were shutting down because they just didn't have the workforce for it anymore, because you had like online such as Amazon and everything was a touch of a button. How do you see that AI is gonna affect like the way that we work as people, um, work-wise, buying-wise, uh, getting things done?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, uh, I think that's a great question. And uh, I've actually uh done a little bit of consulting for a few different companies that have contacted me and said, hey, can you help us understand um how is this gonna impact our our company or our brand and and all that? Um, I I think overall I'm a very optimistic person about AI and I'm extremely excited for it. Uh, it is going to create some shakeups. Um when talking to entrepreneurs, there's never been a more exciting time to be an entrepreneur. And the reason is is um the big guys out there that you're competing against, their advantage uh is uh much smaller than it used to be. And one way you could think about this, and I like your example with the web, is when the when the stores went online, all of a sudden you could compete against anybody. So you could be a nobody, and now you put your market out and it's available for all. And so you no longer needed that hard storefront to compete against JC Pennies or against this, and you didn't have to go beg to get a spot on the rack. Um, and and Amazon really kind of threw that off too, because Amazon, their threshold to get in was nothing. You register, your product is now in our store. Whereas if you wanted to get into the other stores, uh, you had to kind of win a shelf spot. And um, and so that really throws stuff off. But uh, one way you could think about this, um, I like to compare a baker right now. If you are the greatest baker in the entire world, um, if you want to own your own bakery, you have to still compete against everyone else. Your skill set is baking. Now, you got Walmart down the street, or you got Costco, and they have an entire department dedicated for all your legal battles and stuff. They got a department uh for HR, they got a department for marketing. Your skills baking, you have to compete against all that, and you and you just don't stand a chance. I mean you you still do, but the the uh you know um competing against them was quite hard. All of a sudden, that um competitive advantage that those big places have is gonna start shrinking uh because all of a sudden they can get the same quality of marketing, but they don't have to go buy a whole marketing team. And legal terms are gonna be defined real quick, and it's gonna be a fraction of the cost versus hiring hiring a uh lawyer for thousands and thousands of dollars.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. I think the what you said right there is very crucial, is that for entrepreneurs, this is gonna be the biggest benefit closing big gaps between larger corporations and also even it could even be uh companies that have a larger capital that they got started with versus somebody that's trying to open it from maybe their own living room, things like that. Um, and it really is is closing that competition, right? And now it's actually matching like skill to skill, yeah, no longer money. I got big money and you don't. So my product's gonna be out there bigger. Now, this really puts the even playing field out there. So on this on that note, aside from entrepreneurship, what about the workforce? How do you see that changing the workforce?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so the um there is gonna be a shakeup in the workforce, there's no question about that. Um, again, I'm much more on the on the um optimistic side. If you look through history since the industrial revolution, every time technology began to evolve, it created these huge panics in the industry. So you can think of like the tractor, right? That's going to take all the farmers' jobs. Did it take all the farmers' jobs? Yes, it destroyed a whole bunch of them, but it created engineering jobs uh for the people designing the tractors, it created the maintenance jobs for the people who keep and and so every time uh technology has advanced, it's been a complete job destroyer, but it but it has so far has always ended up adding more jobs. Now, um with with the AI, uh, will it destroy all jobs? There's no way it will destroy all jobs because who's gonna keep up with these systems? There still has to be some human touch to it. Um, I think one of the concerns that I would have is if we're prepared to meet the demands of the job. So going from a farmer to an accountant, uh, there was a big jump in skill set needed. And so there's schooling and other things. Uh, right now, if you look at the job listings of these top AI companies, they have a whole bunch of job listings, and the pay is perhaps the largest pay we've ever seen for individual contributors. Uh, we're seeing companies pay over a million dollars to start for a data scientist for these AI companies. Um, and and the the reason is is there's a lack of people with the skill set needed. And so as AI evolves, I think uh one fear I would have is it's not that there's not enough jobs, it's that we don't have enough people that have the skill sets to do those jobs. Yep.
SPEAKER_01:What do you what would you say for a college or for a high school student that's getting ready to go to college, knowing what you know, because you know a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff that none of us even have access or can get that information to right now. What would you say a high school student should be looking to get as a college degree or looking to get into internships? Like, what is that fill, do you think?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so uh that's also a pretty exciting area. Um you know that's that's a really tough question. And and if they go online, they're gonna get a whole bunch of different answers as well for this. Um, but the first thing is there's gonna be skill sets that are actually gonna be more important now than ever before. Uh for example, being learning how to ask the right questions, uh, learning um how to use AI is extremely important right now. And then another thing is um AI is uh there's a study that was released, uh I'm trying to think, about a month ago, and is a no-brainer, it's kind of like the the course, but it was that people with higher skills and higher knowledge used AI much, much better. And the reason why is they know the potential capabilities. For example, if uh you're a programmer, if you know all the different libraries and different tools that AI could take advantage of, when you're when you prompt it, you can uh navigate it down those lanes.
SPEAKER_01:Um, so so those are two structure basically, because of the knowledge base that you already have, and you're leading it in the direction and then you're letting it work from there. Yeah, is that right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01:And and then I definitely see that it not to cut you off, but I definitely see that in the work that I do. Um, I work with us, you know, a landscape of different um industries of entrepreneurs, right? And business owners. And the first thing that when I look at their work, I'm like, did you use AI for this? They're like, Yes. I'm like, this said a whole lot, but it said nothing. And I was like, and let me point out what I'm talking about. And then when I point everything out, I'm like, this a chat GBT is there to be a resource to a tool, basically. It's a tool, it is not gonna do the job for you, and I think that's what people have confused as well is like you need operators because the AI is amazing and it's very intelligent, but you also need good operators for it that can navigate it and tell it what to do.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, exactly. Uh, and and actually, I think you drew you drew out a really, really important point um as this debate about AI and um uh goes on, is that humans understand human consumptions greater than AI, I think, ever will. Um I think it's gonna get really, really good, but uh, we're we're we're we need to be able to communicate the the wants and desires that we're wanting for it. You can't just throw in garbage and then expect like this beautiful thing come out. Um, and I think Chad GBT does a great job of doing that, right? So I I actually help people with some of the AI prompts, and they're like, hey, I can't get this to work. Well, I go back to the prompt, and it's like you just threw something at it, and it's having to guess what what does he want? And he does a pretty good job at guessing, but um, unless you're explicit on what you're what you're um, and it's like if you hire anyone, right? So here's the information, this is what the good results look like, or else you're gonna get people uh you know giving you different uh results.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, not only that, when I see uh certain subjects, um, you could see it even on social media on a smaller scale, right? People are putting using it for captions, you could tell, and the captions sounded like that person's post over there, and that person's post sounded like that one's over there because it's kind of using the same thing. If you're putting in a certain thing, like we're you know, um we're gonna be talking about this or we're gonna be talking about that. Well, if a lot of people are putting that in there, chat GBT is kind of giving out the same, the same names, the same catchphrases.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. And and I and um and I think you could go down the road of a few different things. So, for example, um, entrepreneurs, they're starting with their company, they get a website, and often they want to start a blog. Yeah, well, blogs or social media posts, um, they are becoming somewhat irrelevant. And the reason why is why would I go read your blog post if you just use Chat GBT to make that? Why don't I use Chat GBT to make my own blog post? So the uh, you know, giving it a unique flavor, uh uh an authentic touch to it, and a um a very different experience, like you need to add more to that value than what AI has to say. And uh and if you don't, then then it's gonna become uh just kind of blend in with everything else.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I and again, you just said it right there, it's about authenticity. And so what's happening right now in the business world, consumers, uh customers, potential customers, they're looking at true authenticity when they're coming to your brand. And now that's starting to really differentiate how far you're gonna get as an entrepreneur. If you're not authentic, if you're just using these tools, it's exactly what you just said. Why don't I, as a consumer, just run that through my chat GBT if that's all you're giving me? You know, yeah. Uh just tell me what you asked your chat GBT to do, and I'll do it.
SPEAKER_00:Like, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Uh, let me uh just make one more point though about the education, though. Um, as for the the people going starting their education, uh, I mean, they've got some tough decisions, but the the uh threshold for higher education has basically dropped down to not quite zero, but equivalent is zero. And so before you had to pay a lot of money in order to get that education. Like I'm in engineering, you have to pay a lot for someone to teach you, and all of a sudden, all that knowledge now is right there. So, even like my generation, the internet comes around, you can go search it, but you can't get it into the level detail. So they need to take advantage of that, use it a lot, and then AI can actually be a tutor and deep dive into everything beyond what you what whatever you could normally get from a book. And an example of this is um my daughter, I was I was going uh teaching her about the solar system, and she began to have questions, and it was really neat because she was asking specific questions that there's no way any book would have covered, but it was able to pull all these different you know quotes from different things and and dive into like specifics that there's no way. Uh, when I was going to school, you you read the uh your chapter on the solar system, and I'll talk about each different planet. It's got like two paragraphs. Well, if I got a question, uh these questions she was asking, my teacher wouldn't have known. You can't get that from there, and you might have looked all the library and still not have gotten those questions answered. So being able to deep dive at this level um has never been an option before.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, definitely. I absolutely agree with that. Um, there are so many layers to it, and it's kind of like you have to be that operator that knows how to unlock each layer, right? And you have to know what the the navigation codes are basically. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so let me ask you this. Well, again, hold on. I want to go back to this college thing. What do you think then? You think more people, if they had to choose a college degree, what do you think it should be? Is there even a degree for AI right now?
SPEAKER_00:Uh there are some degrees, and and of course, you can study computer science or data science. Um I always I believe uh getting more technical in nature is gonna always be really, really good beneficial for you. Um uh yeah, I you know it's it's it's it's tough. I I think you you could potentially see a whole lot more people that opting out of college as well. I definitely see that happening. And um if you look at some of the best startups ever to come out in this world, you know, you look at like Bill Gates, a dropout, uh Mark Zuckerberg dropping out of college. Uh, I I can see a future jobs dropped out. Yep, Steve Jobs. I can see uh one of the future rising billion dollar companies. It's not a college dropout, this is a high school student. And and they're gonna say, Hey, how did you learn how to do this and this and this? And and that kid's gonna say, Chat GPT taught me everything. And and I'm really excited, um, because again, um, all that knowledge, there's been this big threshold, right? Well, now you're you're accessing this to billions of people around the earth, some who didn't even have an option for education, you know, maybe they were lived in this a poor village in like India or something. Well, all of a sudden they have the entire knowledge of the unit uh the university, and it's I'm really excited to see what starts coming out of the these places.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I did not even think about that. Wow, that right there was fire. If you live in you know some areas that don't have so much access to education, you have access to education at your fingertips.
SPEAKER_00:Wow, yeah, that's amazing. And that's my favorite part about AI. AI gives each person the ability to just do stuff. You want to do something, just do it. Um, because there's no there's no threshold, you know. Before well, I don't know how to code. Well, you know, use AI, learn how to code, have it help you code, work with it back and forth, and and the next thing you know is you've you've done something that you may have thought you could have never done. So it's it's pretty exciting.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, with that being said, with great power always comes great responsibility, right? How does the scientific community in general think about the ethical side of AA AI?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so that's a really, really great question. Um, and uh so there's a there's an app that just recently came out called Sora. Uh they they do the videos and they look very authentic. And in fact, I think I will uh spend less and less time. I wasn't spending very much time on Facebook or Instagram to begin with, but maybe even less now. And uh what I've already seen is these Sora videos have taken over, and I can't believe these videos that are clearly AI have millions of likes, and a whole bunch of people think they're real.
SPEAKER_01:Um now I you caught my attention because on Facebook you were jumping out of a plane and you were talking, and you're saying like all this stuff, and I was like, Bill, I did not know we jump out of planes, and then yeah, I mean, I mean, they look they look they look very, very real. They look real.
SPEAKER_00:Um, now Sora, I thought they actually did a good job because they have it, they have it in the app, they have a little watermark going, and so uh there are some huge ethical um issues that have to be addressed with all this, and um it's it's tough because the the the technology will continue to progress. So if we put the brakes on all the people kind of doing good and stuff, uh the people who are doing behind the scenes using it for unethical reasons, they're not stopping. And so um it's it's a really it's a really, really tough situation. I will say there's gonna be in my mind of how all this technology goes down, there's gonna be this time where there's gonna be some high risk ethically of people misusing it and then bad outcomes happening. Um, but I think eventually the good will out uh overcome the bad. And and an example of this is right now we have millions of websites up. Uh, there are bad guys right now using LLMs, coding specific LLMs to basically hack into all these different websites uh on these back ends. AI will also come up with all the fixes and all, and eventually, I I believe websites are gonna be more secure than they ever have been. And technology is gonna be more secure than it's ever been. And I see all that happening, but there's gonna be this little time where uh you know all these sites haven't been secured using AI to find all the vulnerabilities, and so there's gonna be this time where bad guys can take advantage of it. But but I think in the end, the long run, uh AI is gonna help us make everything more secure.
SPEAKER_01:Wow, well, that's good to know because again, that's I feel like those are things that these are questions that general population are not really asking, you know. What are the safety concerns? Um, you know, what is what's your biggest hope with uh with the concerns is that the bad kind of gets it's gonna be there and then it goes away, or or that they're gonna put regulations. Doesn't sound like you're leaning towards the regulations though, either.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean there's definit there definitely needs to be some regulations, but um I I think the the uh regulations we we have to be very, very careful because if you slow if you use a bunch of regulations to slow the technology down, you're actually slowing the good guys down, and the bad guys aren't getting slowed down. Um, because this this technology is advancing very, very fast. Um, but but again, the more power you have, um, you have the ability to do good or evil with it. And uh I I think it's like when when I was learning to program, um, I remember learning just different steps, and it became somewhat obvious that hey, you could use this and just start causing a whole bunch of chaos. That was causing chaos is easier than building, right? Destroying is easier than building something beautiful and new, and so um, yeah, it's it's tough. I it's something that they're gonna have to go back and forth with, but um the implications are huge in this case.
SPEAKER_01:Um, I I think I I absolutely agree, you know, and what we talked about uh a minute ago is we talked about how the evolution of technology has kind of transformed the landscape of industries, right? So going back, we think about you brought it up, the farmers, agriculture. Uh, what we think of plows detractors, it freed up Cuban hands, you know. Uh, when we think about the assembly lines uh that went to computers, it freed up human time, right? And then now we're looking at AI, and this is kind of in a sense freeing up human thought. So that freedom, you know, I guess the question becomes what do we do with that freedom? What where do we go from there? And what does leadership begin to look like when the thoughts are all coming from AI?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's um uh so I saw a comic the other day, or maybe it was a video, and it had some young guy coming in and uh they would ask him a question, and he'd be like, Let me see what Chat GPT says. And uh, and that is not the place we want to be, right? Um so I think assistants are gonna be really important in the future. Uh the future I would like is that we each have our individual assistant and they'll kind of tweak and um and they'll be unique for us, and hopefully, um hopefully kind of provoke thought rather than uh then just be a blindless follower. Uh so yeah, I don't know. Those are a really good question. I'm unfortunately I don't have all the answers for that, but no, no worries.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, uh for me, what I see with AI, I feel really excited, super giddy, you know, when people are other people around are kind of panicking and they're saying, Oh my gosh, this is gonna take our job. Look at this whole thing can do all the marketing for the company. And I'm like, that's good. I was like, then we're gonna see a lot of replications of people using the same thing pretty much. And I was like, because you need the driver and the operator to continue to uh make that AI evolve to the message and narrative and authenticity that you need it to have. But even to that point, to that question, the last question was I feel like in today's era, and correct me if I'm wrong or tell me your thoughts, in today's era, especially because we're going into an era an era that none of us have experienced, and this is gonna be like a whole bigger wave than I believe the internet. And yeah, it really is, and it's gonna change lives, it's gonna change industries, it's gonna free up time, free up, you know, all of these things. And to me, I think leadership is going to be the most like thing that's needed in our society, like real leadership with real values um and actions that back it up. Because it's one thing to hey Chat GBT, what do you think of this? And then spo that out versus. Actually, having those actions when you're in a situation, in a circumstance, and you're making the right decisions morally, right? So, leadership, I feel like, is something that we're gonna need more of.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I um so yeah, I I think one of the things that you uh brought up about like the marketing and stuff like this, this is the engineering mind in me. But when I think of manufacturing, um there's really two things that are most important. I mean, there's like the production, but then the end result, and that's all the customer cares about. There's a whole bunch of stuff, and I'm not saying they're not all needed, um, because some of them are, some of them, you know, create safety, some of them do this, like um quality checks, alignment and different things. But at the end of the day, none of that stuff out it adds value. So um, so marketing, does that really add value to your product? It doesn't. At the end of the day, when you receive that product, you also pay for all that marketing and and you pay for the accounting and you pay for all those things, those things aren't actually adding value to the final product, and so being able to reduce all those costs, reduce so AI technology in in practicality will become a deflationary act. For example, those songs that I make. If I wanted to go hire a band to go create my song, I wrote up my song here. I want you guys to make it. They're gonna rent a studio, they need all these different instruments and stuff. It's gonna cost me thousands and thousands of dollars. Now I can get a quality very similar, maybe better, maybe worse, just a little bit, but for cents for pennies. And the same thing is happening with uh lawyer work too, right? Uh, before to write up this contract or whatever, I needed a lawyer, 300 bucks an hour. It's gonna take him two or three hours. And uh, and I've showed I have lawyer friends, and I've showed them some of the results, and they're like, that's better than anything me and my lawyers are putting out. Exact, exact same thing we're doing.
SPEAKER_01:I love it.
SPEAKER_00:It's costing pennies versus hundreds and hundreds of dollars. And so it's deflating, yeah. So so how does that all how is that all gonna shake out in the economy in the long run? Uh that's anyone's guess. Uh, cost of of these expensive services could could go down. But if we if we bring it back to that third world country concept again, right? Uh, or not concept, but in but in reality, is right now throughout the world, there are a lot of people who do not have good access to health care, uh, good doctors, or or or maybe they have to travel hours to doctors. Uh, AI, what it's gonna be able to give is some practical health information or health care uh to all these villages for fraction of the sense at a at a um and and they've been testing AI, and AI is actually outperforming doctors now and diagnosed and diagnosing.
SPEAKER_01:Uh oh my god.
SPEAKER_00:This this is from a study almost two years ago. Uh ChatGPT 4.0 beat doctors um and went diagnosing. And and then there's been some other studies since then. But but now you're gonna give people who just wouldn't have access to that, access to it. It's gonna save lives for sure.
SPEAKER_01:That's so wild because I love that you bring that up. Last year I got a surgery, and guess what? A robot did my surgery.
SPEAKER_00:That's cool.
SPEAKER_01:So obviously, there was somebody controlling everything, but I mean the surgeon was controlling everything, but there was no surgeon in my actual surgery room, they were in another room guiding the guiding the prompts.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so it is it's really, really exciting. So um I'll show you this. Is kind of some of my theories with what's gonna end up happening to society you'll see over the next uh few years. Um, so one of the most exciting uh AI uh movements is actually the automobiles, cars becoming autonomous. That's gonna be a huge impact. For one, I don't trust uh drivers on the road, I trust myself driving, but I don't trust all these people looking down at their phones. Um and uh probably the riskiest thing I do every day is get on the road. That's probably the riskiest thing. Um but so uh self-driving is gonna take all that. Um and then um sorry, is that gonna mess up? Sorry. Should I start the answer over? Okay, so uh one of the one of the areas that I think is gonna transform is as self-driving cars come, um I what I believe you're gonna actually see is people kind of start moving out from the city. And the reason is is uh commute before if you're in our commute, uh works pretty tough. That means you need to drive an hour, you work eight hours, nine hours, and then you gotta drive back. And so now you're already 10, 11 hours. Um, and in the future, if you've got self-driving vehicles, you can live an hour and a half away, maybe two even two hours. Like that, that's too long for me. But uh your commute could be sitting there with your laptop, getting two hours worth of work done. You go in now, you only need to do uh you know five hours worth of work. You can head back, get your other hour and a half done, two hours, and so you're putting in the same amount of work, you're not having to be there for the entire time, and and then your your uh your cyber cab drops you off, and then it starts going around driving other people, making money to pay for it, and then comes back.
SPEAKER_01:Well, in San Jose, so it's so funny. Uh, somebody posted a self-driving car out here in San Antonio about a few weeks ago, and I crack up because coming from San Jose, I mean that stuff was out since 2016, 2018, right? And you know, back in 2018, when they were testing them out, and uh by the time we got to 2020, um, the report that came out was yes, were these self-driving cars in accidents? They were, but it was I want to say it was like nine times out of 10, it was the other driver's fault, not the the self-driving car. So and I know that that's where Uber was trying to go in the very beginning. They were um partnering up with self-driving cars, so you know, like Google has their self-driving car. Uh, you got Tesla, Waymo, Waymo, yeah. So there's a lot of companies that have this technology. When do you see this going critical mass?
SPEAKER_00:Well, um, I've done self-driving in the Tesla many times now, and uh it's it's quite impressive. Um, it's to me, what it seems like from everything I've seen, it looks like Tesla has a path forward for a mass adoption. So uh they can produce the cars a lot faster, cheaper. I I think Waymo that's gonna be one of their troubles, is even if they hit the self-driving first, where it can be fully autonomous, it they're quite expensive. They cost quite a bit more than than the Tesla, uh, just because it's not using the LIDAR technology, it's just using the cameras. So you so your cost is gonna be a fifth of the cost or something. So um, but when it would when will it hit? I I don't know. I mean, it it's been promised forever. Um test, of course. Elon Musk has has promised it, and and uh uh it's taking a lot longer than he expected. Ford actually originally had promised that they would reach self-driving by 2020. Uh Ford not only didn't reach it, they gave up their self-driving program, completely eliminated it, and now they're using a uh another company's gonna be uh doing their self-driving vehicles.
SPEAKER_01:So anyway, trying to put their Shelby in the race.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so I I think I I really hope to see it in the next year to three years.
SPEAKER_01:So that would be amazing. What um what places do you see it happening first um in them adopting that idea faster?
SPEAKER_00:Well, if if you want to uh start using self-driving just on your own, I mean you can do it now with with uh the self-drive with with Tesla, but um what it appears to be doing is little cities are gonna start adopting it, and then hopefully it goes mass fairly quickly.
SPEAKER_01:So now, is there other countries that are out there right now that are using self-driving cars?
SPEAKER_00:Uh this is not something I've I've uh looked into that much. I I have heard of some places, but I I'm not uh familiar enough to let you know.
SPEAKER_01:I don't think we're so that leads me to my next topic. Last night I'm laying down and I'm like excited about our conversation today, and I get a text message from you, and I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm showing Jake, Jake, look at this. We have to order one. I'm like, come on, folding laundry. I was like, so this is a robot that pretty much helps you around the house, picks up heavy stuff, can do anything. So tell us a little bit more about this robot.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. So I see the uh I seen the video from Figure. Um, so figure is this uh company, they are making humanoid robots, and another top contender is actually Tesla with their Optimus robot. So so both are head-to-head. And um and the ad that I see better, first of all.
SPEAKER_01:What which one's better?
SPEAKER_00:Uh the so when it comes to like language models, they do a lot of benchmarks, and you can actually kind of tell, and it's easy. When it comes to um robots, we don't have good benchmarking, so unfortunately, there's no like good comparison, and neither one of them is out for public yet. Uh when, yeah, but well, that's that's a great question. So um, but but I'm gonna say I if if I was gonna say who's gonna end up winning the race, right now I would put my money on Tesla, and and the reason is is did you ever see the Honda robot they had? I I feel like it's 20 years ago or or maybe more. They had this little Honda robot and it would go around this somewhat humanoid robot-looking thing, and it could no, I don't remember. Um, but it just never it never did anything, and then there was Boston Dynamics. You are you familiar with Boston Dynamics?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, not at all.
SPEAKER_00:So they did early robotics for the military, and they have some humanoid-looking robots, and they have you have Atlas and it would do like flips and stuff, and they did some dance videos, and then they also have the dog looking thing with the little arm that can be like, and and all these things are being done in the industry, and I've been waiting for like the last 20 years, like, where's my robot? I want to buy a robot, and clearly way too expensive. Like, I don't know what the uh dog robot is now, but uh you you can get it, it's just extremely, extremely expensive. Uh, figure the difference with figure and Tesla uh Optimus is they are looking at robots that could potentially work in our everyday life, and that's exciting. Uh, so if you watch the video, it's folding laundry, it's loading dishes, it's doing different things, and it's really, really exciting. Now, I did watch the interview since I sent you that, and it sounds like it still airs out a lot more. It's not ready for that.
SPEAKER_01:Oh gosh. Well, can we also program it to make us French cuisine, best Mexican food? It has to be a chef, too.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I I'm hoping. I I'm hoping, right? Like every every night it's gonna be like a five-star restaurant, right? Um, and and then my other hope with it is it will um you you can basically program it all the skills you need. So, so right when when I was talking about how the people in the city are gonna start spreading out, I think that's a part of it. When these humanoid robots can go build like houses and stuff, now you can build way out in the middle of nowhere. And before, if you wanted the best builder in the nation, you're gonna have to be like in the city. Now you're gonna be you could be in the middle of nowhere, and you can get just as good a quality build.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, that's exciting! That is very exciting. I love that opportunity. I feel like the future is endless when it comes to opportunity, but also, you know what? Now that I think about our conversation that we just had, I think the biggest opportunity is for people to even though we're talking about AI and how it's taking our thoughts and basically thinking for us, but you also have to be a bigger thinker to see how you're gonna pivot and adjust to this new landscape and how you are gonna survive survival of the fittest, you're gonna survive AI.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. Who who can learn how to use it the best? You're gonna get advanced, they're gonna have advantage. Yep.
SPEAKER_01:What do you think the next billionaires are gonna look like? Because we got, you know, um Tesla, we have uh what's his name? Amazon, um Bezos. You know, he did it off of the first internet store. So what do you think?
SPEAKER_00:I think this is another exciting point for uh entrepreneurs. Uh so Sam Altman, he's the CEO of Open AI. Uh, he has said in an interview, and he might have said it in several interviews, that he sees a future billion-dollar company coming from a five-man startup. The entire company is just five-man, and that's worth a billion dollars.
SPEAKER_01:I love this.
SPEAKER_00:Um, and it's because the AI will enable uh you to basically uh give that much value to that many people that it's worth that much, right? Like you're not actually uh selling a billion dollars, it's it's uh created that much valuation to the market that people value that that uh um that add over a billion dollars. So it's it's pretty it's pretty crazy. So yeah, I I this is a great time to be an entrepreneur.
SPEAKER_01:No, it really is, you know. And even I was having a conversation on my last podcast episode. Right now, we're living in a time in an era in history where the most millionaires and billionaires are being produced in history, yeah. And that is crazy to think, right? I mean, it gives me goosebumps to think that this is the history that we're living in this history right now, and I can't even imagine what it's gonna be like for our kids. What I mean, what are your kids? How how do you shield them from AI? Do you protect them from Chat GPT? Like what do you do?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so I think it's a great time to start training them how to use AI. Um, I actually taught, um, I I did a class about AI use to um some young men that's in my church. And one of the things I I talked to them is the uh the internet when it was coming out, it gave this huge opportunity. And um some people were super scared of it because it can be used for cheating and other things, but you could also go and learn in ways you never could before, and you could learn all these different skills. And I said, this is this has even gone even more so, right? So each day when you're at school, you can use AI to learn a whole bunch of more, learn deeper, uh beyond anything that you were gonna learn in school, or you can use it to cheat, but but at the end of the day, if you cheat using AI, you're cheating yourself. That's all you're doing. You you had an opportunity to grow, and instead you uh diminish that opportunity. So um I'm definitely teaching my kids how to use it, and it's quite fun. Uh, we do stories with it. Um, actually, Emma, uh, we just were talking about it today. She's gonna help me. I've got some new albums I'm gonna put out, and I do not have time, so she's actually gonna help me put them all together. So it's I love this.
SPEAKER_01:And how old is she?
SPEAKER_00:Uh, she's 13.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, well, look at that. She's already running her own uh helping dad with his business. I have to say, okay, hilarious. Don't judge me, okay, Bill. But the other, not the other day, a few weeks back, my daughter and I were talking about something and she was trying to negotiate with me on why she should do something. And I was like, no, I don't think that even has any relevance of why I should let you do this. And then she was arguing her point. So I said, okay, you know what? We're gonna take this to my bestie, we're gonna ask Chat GBT. So she was like, What?
SPEAKER_00:That's awesome.
SPEAKER_01:Your Chat GBT is gonna favor you, and I was like, No, it's gonna do the best results. So we asked the question to Chat GBT, and it was favoring both of us. So it's like, I understand your concerns, mom, and I understand your concerns, Avea, but this isn't that, and here's what you can do. And so we looked at each other, we're like, okay, that was pretty smart.
SPEAKER_00:So, so here's a question. So, did it end up getting you both closer to middle middle ground? Yes, yeah, I I think that that is an awesome use for AI. And I've I've done that in my personal life too. I've I've pulled it out and been like, hey, listen, I'm having this conflict. Here's my viewpoint, and here's some details with you know, there, and then um uh there's been times that it's kind of been like, Hey, you know, maybe you need to think about it a little bit this way, and it's kind of moved me over a little bit and and then also gave me ideas for conflict resolution, and uh it's it's good. So, what a great use! That's awesome.
SPEAKER_01:I love it. I mean, I was like, wow, this is awesome! So anytime we get into an argument now, like not an argument, a disagreement, she's like, take it to Chat GBT, take it to Chat GBT. I'm like, no, we're not gonna do that because it might go in your way in your favor. But we do have to give it instructions, right? You have to be unbiased, uh, you know, and considering all of these things. So it's it definitely gives us good advice, I guess. Yeah, um, but I thought interesting. Where do you see AI going from now? So we talked about obviously Chat GBT and then taking over companies as far as like roles for like marketing, and you could put something in and it'll shoot something out because now it's gonna give you that data um based on what your company's needs are and what they who they are, because you're able to drop in like that type of document and information into it. Um, and then we talked about self-driving cars and our robots. I want my personal robot, I will be the guinea pig, send one to my house.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:What do you think is next? What do you see is next from that? Where do we go from there?
SPEAKER_00:So the um the goalpost in in a lot of people's eyes, uh, they call it AGI. Uh, and the definition for that changes. Uh, I've put a lot of thought into what I think AGI is. I what I consider AGI would be um it can it can um change, it's got this memory capacity, but it can also continue to evolve and create its own tools. And so you're seeing agents right now, they're doing a whole lot more. So before it kind of just completed a sentence, it completed some thoughts. But the new reasoning models, if you're if you're using like the latest GBT, you'll ask a question, and and this was one of the that I asked is I took a picture of an ant, and you can actually see his reasoning. And when it first zoomed in, it said, you know, I think this ant is this, but let's be sure. And so what it did is it started editing my my picture, zooming in closer, and then like changing the photo so the picture was clearer, and then it's like that ant's got you know a black back end and then brown on the front end. It goes, I still think it's this. Let me go online and check. And then it went online, started pulling up pictures, started comparing them, and then finally gave me the answer. It could have given me an answer just like that, but it's actually going in very fine. Um, so I think once we hit AGI, um AGI to S ASI, which is super intelligence, I don't think it's that far apart. And and what it would what how I could see it is it could rewrite entire code languages or make up a brand new code language in a day or a week. And wow, the whole internet looks completely different. But but when we hit that, I think we're gonna see some of the coolest technology because it's gonna start discovering tech or sorry, uh science. It's gonna start doing science, and I think this is when biggest gains could be accomplished. So, for example, we see all of our diseases and stuff. Um, I have high hopes that it will begin to start solving those diseases, and you're gonna start seeing cures for this disease and cures for this disease, and it's gonna end up progressing science remarkable. And and I hope we see that in the next few years. I want to start seeing people heal the diseases with this technology. I mean, that's that's a dream. So those are the those are the good things.
SPEAKER_01:That would be impressive. I mean, it's cool to think we see all these superistic uh technology movies, and now we're starting to see it evolve around us, so that's pretty incredible.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, the future, the future needs to be exciting.
SPEAKER_01:It yes, it does, so and fun and and uh keep us guessing, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And the thing that I love about technology is um uh Elon Musk often says it too. Um, but you like technology because it's like the closest thing to magic in reality. And I feel like the thing that's gotten people so excited with the AI movement is it does feel magical, right? Like you ask a question and it gives you an answer that's new, it's it's uh novel, it's it's not a copycat of something, it's brand new, it's unique. And um, if you learn to ask the questions, right, if you learn to like dig deep, it comes up with some really cool stuff, some really creative stuff.
SPEAKER_01:So it really does. And I think that's the key word there being able to ask the right questions and lead it in the direction that you need to go for sure. 100%. So, in the beginning of this conversation, you said your wife Charlotte was going to be starting a new business. What's the new business? Do we get to find out? Tell us.
SPEAKER_00:I I can't announce it yet, but it's coming, it's coming soon.
SPEAKER_01:So, okay, what does it have to do with what industry is it in? Because I mean, you guys totally slayed the Elkie business. I mean, took that business to a million in what one year?
SPEAKER_00:So what yeah, it took it took about two, probably about two and a half years. We got her up to a million.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, well, two years to go to a million, that's that's not uh that's that's awesome.
SPEAKER_00:So um, so so I can't I can just tell you that her new business is not gonna be that flashy, it's gonna be actually on the boring side. Um, okay. But um, but we we think there's some good opportunities to to uh relieve pain points for for people. So compliance um is painful for people. So if we the I guess the idea is how can you make people's lives easier and add value and uh and do it in a way that it's not gonna add a whole bunch of stress to her. So yeah, so it's it's not as flashy or anything, but uh, she does have other businesses down the line, and I think those ones will be even funner to like look at and discuss, but uh but this one's still gonna be really good, it's just not gonna be as flashy as her bag bag business.
SPEAKER_01:But oh my gosh. Well, I think anything that she's doing, she's very creative, super intelligent. So, and then you guys are partners in crime, so you're gonna make it all happen. And I can only imagine it's gonna hit a million dollars in one year this time.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it it was is funny. Um, because she sold her bag, or actually, she didn't sell her bag business. She closed it down, she's leaving it so the kids can open it up if they want, and um and we were talking about different i business ideas. She's like running these ideas back and forth with me, and um, I wake up and I think it was like 4:30 in the morning or something, she's not in bed, so I go downstairs and she's like editing logos and stuff. So so anyway, she's uh uh it'll be fun.
SPEAKER_01:So that's the insomnia of the entrepreneur, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, she's like, I gotta do something. So it'll be exciting.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I'm excited. I want to be the first to know. Let me know, and we'll have her on the show as well. But um, I what you know, I know we talked about a lot here. What do you feel like uh the audience needs to hear before we wrap this up? If you could leave them with one thing, what would that be?
SPEAKER_00:Okay, I I think the number one thing is uh to be optimistic about this technology, be excited, involve it in your life, involve it in uh as you're being an entrepreneur, making your business. How can I use this to make my life better? How can I do more with it? How can I um yeah, basically that uh they're gonna hear a lot of people throw a lot of scare tactics and things out right now, and and and there will be that, but uh ignore the good or sorry, ignore the bad uh because there's so much good happening right now. There's there's a lot of good things to look forward to.
SPEAKER_01:I love that. Thank you so much. All right, guys, you heard it here. We talked with Bill Evans and he shared some amazing insight about technology, AI, and where it's all going. But the biggest thing that we're gonna leave you with is do not be afraid of AI, embrace it, learn it, and become the game player with it, right? Thank you so much.