Narrative intelligence and the human advantage

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Welcome to another episode of the Practical AI Podcast. This is Daniel Leitnack. I am CEO at Prediction Guard, and I'm joined as always by my co-host, Chris Benson, who is a principal AI and autonomy research engineer.

How you doing, Chris?

Hey, doing good today, Daniel. How's it going?

It's, uh, it's going great. You know, the story continues. There's, there's ups and ups and downs along the way. And, you know, very, very blessed overall and, and really blessed today to have an episode that I've been looking forward to recording for some time. Back in, in part of our journey as a company, we were going through an accelerator program with Intel called Intel Ignite. And through that program, met our guest today. Reid Frerichs, who is a lot of things. He's doing so much amazing stuff in his journey from a new podcast that he has out, Inner Story. He does leadership coaching, he's involved with MIT and startups and all sorts of things and has kind of a background in acting and in media. So welcome to the show, Reid. It's great to have you here.

Thank you so much, Daniel and Chris. Appreciate it.

Yeah. Yeah. And obviously that's, you know, I love your story because Because you've flexed into all of these things. You're always being creative. You're, I think in our experience together, I've appreciated so much how you've helped me think about, you know, my own journey as an entrepreneur, the story of our company. Now I know, you know, you're thinking about topics, of course, related to AI, like everyone is and what our unique role is, you know, as humans in that.

Yes.

We'll get into all of that, but I'm wondering if you could just share a little bit of your story with us and kind of at a high level how you ended up where you're at.

Well, thank you. I find myself sharing this story much more, and the best way to frame it is it is a windy path because I look back and you think like you're always taking inventory, like, is this all working? Is this my story really making sense? Who am I? Like, how many times you ask these questions to yourself over time, but actually it wasn't until that Intel program. I was so, I shared this last month at a Harvard class we were teaching. Basically, I was so nervous in that program when I first started because it was so much about deep tech and engineers and AI was starting to really come up. And I was going, oh my God, like, what am I doing here? You know, I graduated at UT in business and I went off and had an acting career for a little while and then got into producing and media and startups. And I was kind of just trying to figure out like, what am I doing around these really smart people? Like yourself, Daniel. I mean, it's like a lot of half the room was PhDs. And then we started talking and introducing ourselves and I started seeing pitches. I was running deal flow when I first started at Intel. And so I got to see a ton of pitches. I mean, we saw Pretty much most of the top companies going in the US would come through at some point and we'd meet 'em. And the one thing I kind of came away with going, I think I can help with story. Maybe I can help out a little here. Started thinking of their pitch a little bit like almost like a movie. And I thought, gosh, maybe I can contribute here. So that kind of at least allowed me sort of the lane into this world. And then once you get into it, you start to realize like there's just so much to it because Founders are just becoming leaders and they're always becoming, you're constantly learning and adapting, especially now. So that really, you know, was sort of the ignition for me to really learn more about leadership coaching, my own journey as a founder, which I was sitting there going, why is this happening to me? You know, all the things that you go through as a founder, but it just evolves, right? It's always evolving.

Yeah, I love that perspective. I think I resonate so much with it. Because, you know, I don't think it's talked about a lot in terms of how startups and entrepreneurship and those that are building tech companies that, you know, ventures are in a big way how culture is shaped, right?

Yes.

And how people are shaped. And I think that's overlooked often in terms of, you know, obviously people are, you know, it's, I hope for a good financial outcome for myself and what I'm doing. I think that's a reasonable part of it, but also there's a much broader story of why we're doing what we're doing. And maybe that brings us a little bit to some of our topic about especially how that culture is shifting around AI specifically. But again, before we get into that, maybe you could just share a little bit about a couple of the things that you're involved with now.

Sure.

And like, That storytelling piece, how has that evolved to connect with the tech world, with some of your current ventures?

Great question. So where I am right now is I'm primarily executive coaching or leadership coaching at MIT's Business School, the Sloan Fellows Program primarily, and then also with some startups, usually right around the Series A, Series B level primarily, and now coaching their teams. And it's been fascinating getting into coaching teams because You learn a lot more of the different perspective going on within the startup and kind of how people are feeling, how they're trying to evolve as leaders. With MIT, what's been interesting is you have, there's a lot of international students and specifically a lot of the ones I get, they all come here kind of wanting to be an American entrepreneur. So they're always like, can you help me tell my story like this? They'll give me like a video or an example and it'll be somebody, you know, probably really famous in the tech world, but But I always find like, that's such, like they have fear coming here. They're trying to stand out, they're trying to find their unique positioning. But oftentimes when we get into their story, their story is so fascinating. It's usually, there's usually a ton of like obstacles for them to even get to MIT. Obviously they come from a lot of backgrounds that took a lot of resilience, a lot of overcoming, and there's just all this gold in their story that they're basically trying to hide. And it's so, A lot of the process is trying to extract out that unique positioning, and that really is what sort of informed what I'm calling right now a little bit around narrative intelligence. But it's really about how to extract your unique self into your story and evolve it in real time. Because with AI, everybody's excited about AI, but also fearful of AI. And so there's this constant back and forth. And so how do you continuously adapt? is sort of what happens throughout all of the coaching and work I'm doing right now.

You mentioned, so I'm kind of coming in cold with you and Daniel have been through this experience together and stuff. You mentioned narrative intelligence and could you kind of take me through what that means a little bit? You've referenced it, but I'm not sure I'm there yet. And then maybe kind of, and you also mentioned kind of in the same breath AI. And so, could you kind of like, what's the relationship? I don't understand at this point. So I'll leave that to you on that.

So it's obviously artificial intelligence, you know, was sort of, you know, started thinking about it and, you know, the more we were diving into some of the research and work, we started realizing like we live inside stories. So much of our decision-making, our choices, everything's from the moment we wake up, we're inside of a story, right? And so I started looking at like, you know, narrative intelligence. There's been different people that have looked at it. It really, I think the one article I saw was back around MIT and Harvard, Some different engineers trying to learn how to talk to each other. And so they formed like a group around it. So that led me to think, okay, what else is here given the current times with AI? And so as I started interviewing people and working with people, I started thinking, what could become more real-time around like what could become narrative intelligence? Storytelling has its place, obviously, and for a leader or a founder raising money, talk pitching a customer. But a lot of times storytelling, people get stuck in the stories and they don't evolve 'em. And that's when I started thinking like, things are changing for a startup founder every day and there's new information and there's new audiences and how do you just continuously evolve it? So that's sort of where I started. So I pitched it, I did my first talk at South by Southwest last year and I was so nervous. I was going in there, I was in the green room and I remember the guy from Ted Lasso, if you've seen that show, was in there and he's sitting there and I'm like so nervous. I'm like, oh my God, there's like people around here. Is anybody going to show up in my room? You know? So I had like this This was a new format they started this past year called Core Conversations. So I was really excited, but I really didn't know if anybody was going to show up. So I started peeking outside the door going, gosh, I wonder if anybody's going to show up in this room. And luckily it was sold out. It was like 50 people. So I'm not talking like a 400-person theater, but it was a really good conversation. A lot of interesting perspectives, questions, curious about what you were just asking. What is this narrative intelligence and how are you You know, coaching it. And so what it really came out of all of that is people are afraid about the future. They're trying to, a lot of them are in transitions from one career. We had one guy there who was one of the top guys at NASA and he was like, I'm trying to change my career now and I'm trying to transition in this next stage of life. And so what it really told me was it's kind of like the classic hero's journey. If you're familiar with Joseph Campbell or what's pretty much in every movie.

Yeah.

Is it's kind of like we're all living that hero's journey. You know, we're in the, you know, whether it's the call, we're being called into some adventure or action, or we're going through the threshold, or whether we're returning back home and we're trying to get back to our true self. There's all these kind of periods we go through. So as I dove deeper into it, I, I pulled a lot of my acting that I, coaching I received. I, I was fortunate to train with some, some of the top acting coaches in LA, and then coaching psychology. neuroscience. I started trying to pull, extract different things from it. And what I really came up with is a 3-step process, which is own, author, and act. You know, show up each day and own where you're at, whether you like it or not, or whether you're neutral on it, but own where you are in your journey. You know, look at ways that you can extract the learnings forward and then author this next chapter, this next phase for you. It could be that week, that quarter, that next milestone, but learn to author it. And what I found in the coaching was a lot of times it required a little reframing of your story. We had a founder, I think it was in Daniel's cohort that I remember working with, and she didn't think she could be the CEO. She was really nervous. She kept telling me every day in the first couple weeks of the program, like, I really shouldn't be CEO. I don't think I can do this. And she was from another country and she just had a lot of fear around it. And again, as we dove deeper into the work, she just really needed to kind of reframe her story and where she was to that point. And what she started to realize is she gained a lot of confidence and saw that she could become CEO. And so own, author, and act. And act is the hardest thing because oftentimes we don't step into that first action step, as small as it may be. We often let uncertainty get in the way.

One quick follow-up on that. I'm curious, does, when you're saying that, the notion of imposter syndrome came to mind. And is that, does that play into this process?

100%. 100%. And I think imposter syndrome, I don't know one founder or pretty much anybody who hasn't gone through imposter syndrome. If you don't have imposter syndrome, there might be something wrong with you. That's my feeling. But I think the more you can embrace imposter syndrome and normalize it, that this is going to happen. I mean, if you're taking the risk to start a company and going through the hell that it takes to become, to be an entrepreneur, to be a founder, because it is, it's always like 10 times harder, longer, everything. I mean, sure, Daniel's Nodding over there because it's never easy. If it is easy, you probably just got lucky. You might, you got a lottery ticket, you got a lottery ticket or something. But so embracing imposter syndrome and immediately recognizing that that's going to be part of the journey is probably the best way to approach it.

Yeah, I definitely resonate with that a ton. And I want to get to like each of these phases that you talked about and kind of tie it in also to like our our journey with AI. Um, more generally, I think that would be really interesting. However, um, before we do that, maybe just like a, uh, it may, maybe it's like framed as a simple question, but I think there's a lot behind it. Like what, I guess my question is, why should people care about their own journey or expressing their own, their, their own story, like at a high—

Yeah.

At a high level, like what, what does that do maybe for the person and those in their environment?

Well, I would just say it simply is the one unique thing, you know, you have is your story and your journey. And we often, you know, I saw a statistic the other day that we have 60,000 thoughts a day, and I think 80% of them are negative, but learning to start shifting the mindset and realizing like, With AI, I mean, everybody has their different perspectives on AI and where it's going and how fast and what it's going to do. But at the very least, we can all pretty much recognize it's very powerful. It's game-changing. We're at a pivotal moment in our, in history. And so all the more reason for you to double down on yourself and figure out ways to evolve yourself. I mean, to adapt, to personally grow, to become the leader you want to become. To, you know, embrace AI and use AI that's practical for you and no pun intended, but basically use AI in a way that can help accelerate your personal growth, you know, as leaders, as people, as family members, as dad or wife or brother, sister, whoever. I mean, it's, and that's the other big thing is once I've found quickly with founders, Daniel, I'm sure you can attest to this, is it quickly becomes, it's hard to turn off. Like you're a founder and then you kind of come home and it's hard. You got to kind of turn it off. But eventually it all kind of becomes one and the same. The leader you are at work quickly evolves to the leader you are at home and in your personal life. And so the more you can quickly align those two and learn to just become a leader, accept the fact that this is an identity I want to become in all aspects of my life, I think is important.

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So, Reid, you definitely have— you got me hooked on this. I'm curious, and I think both Daniel and myself and others listening or watching the show, we're probably using a set of tools and to some degree, we're probably doing some of that, I'm guessing.

Yeah.

There were ideas, uh, as you were, as you were talking that were kind of resonating, like I was kind of going, well, I do this and I do that. And I think, you know, that's helped my, you know, that's helped. This obviously helps at work. This thing has helped at home. Um, as we're using different, you know, different, uh, uh, models and chats, you know, all the things. And so, uh, agents these days. What are some of the things like if you're trying to get focused now on, on developing narrative intelligence and you want to use you want to use tools in a more focused way to help yourself develop your story, as you've discussed. Can you kind of focus me? Can you kind of take me down a path on what that means? And like, you know, instead of me just kind of doing whatever I'm doing eclectically, kind of give me a strategy.

Okay. Yes, I think, and that's one of the hardest things, Chris, I think for all of us. And it was one of the things I think I gravitated into coaching because I needed it for myself. I mean, You know, we get distracted and we're maybe excited about some personal development or some book or some growth at one point, and then we're quickly back off of that. So I, you know, what I found to be very helpful with coaching founders and even for myself is really getting focused on your values, like really defining like, what do you value? And if you're working at a company like, you know, technology company or whatever, or you're a founder, really establishing where can I align my personal values with the company values? You know, where, 'cause that alignment is everything and it goes deeper into the why. You know, we've all heard about the talks about the why, but it really is true. I mean, yeah, you'd have to get to the what and how, but really with the why for your own personal why, where you see yourself going, understanding the company why, wherever you're working is hugely valuable because I think what that does is keep you focused. Back to your question about focus, it keeps you focused on how you're gonna stay motivated, how you're gonna stay passionate. You know, what is the purpose here? What is the goal? So it's kind of like values is sort of the core foundation and then looking at the track to the outcome, like, and then work back from that. Like what outcome do, does the company foresee or what outcome do I want in my personal life? And then working back to what are those steps I can step into? So that's, I, that's really been, I think the best and the biggest thing I found is just keeping it super simple and realistic because I can't tell how many times I've done this personally and, and And just fallen off and gone, oh gosh, you know, I set these goals and, you know, it sounded great at January 1st, but, you know, by February 1st, I'm already like, what's going on here? I'm not doing hardly any of this stuff. So just making them realistic. That book Atomic Habits is one of my favorite books. A lot of people have read that, but that's a really great way to look at how you can be, you compound yourself over the course of the year with really small habits.

You know, I've read the book, so Good.

Definitely, definitely a good one. Danny, you were about to say something?

Yeah. Reed, I think you kind of started out the, you mentioned those 3 steps. The first one was own. I've been thinking about that as you and Chris have been talking and it really resonated with me in relation to how myself and our team and maybe how I've led in the adoption of AI on our team. And I think we're, We have been blocked and maybe not, not aligned like you're talking about to where we need to go with AI, how we need to adopt those tools, which tools we adopt, et cetera, has been maybe when I've kind of led more, uh, I've not owned where, where I am with the technology and what I don't know and what I'm, you know, comfortable with or not comfortable with. I've thought a lot over the past year about, uh, my own humility, right? Around like, oh, I have these certain code standards, right?

Yeah.

And our team, and I have these standards around how a software development lifecycle should happen, right? And I know in my pride or, you know, whatever that is, that this is the way it should go. And I'm not really owning the reality of where the technology is and what's possible with it. So I'm actually, so let's say our company wants to get to this place like you're talking about. We have values that are important to us and we have a mission of what we're trying to achieve. I'm actually a liability then towards that mission because I'm not, I'm not acting out of humility or a real ownership of what the reality is. Is that partially what you mean by that? I'm curious your reflection on, on that experience, I guess.

Yes. Well, first of all, don't beat yourself up, Daniel. This is very common. And I think part of it is, is because you're the leader, you're the CEO. So you're trying to show certainty. You're, you have a tremendous background and you're super smart, but like, I think that really is it because what I'm finding with teams right now, we actually, with one team I'm coaching, it's an AI company, but we're calling it now the Ownership Project because so much of these leaders, I mean, you know how it is when you're going from these early stages, you're in survival mode for so much of it, right? You're just trying to survive. And then all of a sudden you, you know, you either hit that point where you're starting to grow revenue and you get some investment. And now you're expected to really grow and everybody's gotta grow. A lot of these leaders, some of 'em haven't been in leadership positions, so everybody's now learning together. And I think what you pointed out is really key for the CEO founder especially, is to be more open when they can about like what they don't know. I can't tell you how many times I think founders just naturally want to say, hey, I've gotta pretend like I know it all, you know, because they think that's the norm. But really, When they can open up and say, hey, this is an area I'm learning too, so we can learn together, I think can be very valuable as well. So yeah, ownership is such a big topic right now. I'm finding it coming up in almost every team and group I'm coaching with because also they need the rest of the team to take initiative and whether it's AI tools they're learning or anything that's happening, I mean, it's happening so fast that whatever anybody can bring to the table and share and move forward, All the better, right? It's no longer helpful to be siloed.

Yeah.

Yeah. And do you think that that connects with then, let's say a person in, like you were talking about people considering their roles, even if they're not, let's say the CEO or in that position, people are constantly being fed like your role might not be here. You need to adapt, like all of these things. And it's really hard to embrace that, that sort of reality. I'm not saying it is the reality for everyone, right? But I don't know, that brings up emotions for sure in terms of people's relationship to AI and what it could mean.

That's a big part of it. And I think especially as you would know, I think a lot of engineers, especially like, you know, in the day where everybody was told, yeah, go become, learn how to code, you know, and this is the path. This is like the, and for a lot of reasons it is, it's such a great But now every, there's a lot of people now looking like, am I going to get replaced? And I think that's happening across most industries. I know with some of the people I'm talking to, like in Hollywood, there's a guest I just had on, Eric Shamlin, and he's kind of an expert around technology and AI and Hollywood, all the studios and stuff. And oh my God, like, yeah, it's amazing. Everybody thinks they're getting replaced. And so yeah, I think there's a, I think for your role, it's going to be a lot of like your coaching.

Yeah.

Having to coach and manage and listen to people and really just kind of bring it back to what's practical right now in today's current time, knowing that there's a lot can change. But what can you control right now? It's sort of the old like military, what can I control in this moment? So I think that's really helpful. But yeah, and it really, it's also requiring a lot of your teammates to start learning it, looking at ways that maybe they can wear another hat. And I know they're probably going, gosh, I signed up for this startup and I thought the role was this when I signed up and it's changed and I'm taking on all these roles, but that's also part of how you learn. I mean, one of the things I coach with some of the people at MIT who are considering 2 tracks, am I going to go try to interview and get a job with Google, hopefully, or Facebook or Meta or whoever? Or, you know, do I want to start my own business or go work for a startup for a while? And that's one of the pros you try to get across is like, You may not make as much money, there might not be as much certainty, but guess what? You can learn a lot quickly. You can take on a lot of different roles quickly. So it's a great thing to understand as you're approaching that.

And I'd like to actually extend this because you're actually going where I was going to ask you anyway. And it's like we are in, for better or for worse, kind of the most fantastic moment in history. When, you know, where things have changed and, you know, uh, the notion of who we are and our identities are changing, the work we're doing on a day-to-day basis, how we get it done. I know speaking for myself, uh, I am with, with the new possibilities, you know, that the tooling creates. I'm more productive right now than I've ever been in my entire life.

Yeah.

And, and so, uh, and I'm learning, I'm like, I'm learning what to do with that. Like, uh, there was an adjustment. of extra capacity. And so, you mentioned about in startups, people will come in and say, well, I came in on this role, but maybe it's time to pivot my role within the startup. But I think that's happening in all organizations right now.

Yes.

You can have very large, well-established organizations that are having the same situation with the new capabilities coming in. And so, that is continuing to accelerate. And so given the fact that our day-to-day reality is accelerating along this trend, and therefore it's not even the rate of learning being the same, you don't have to learn the same tomorrow. You have to learn more than you've learned today. And the next day you're going to have to learn more and have a greater ability to pivot in your own world.

Yes.

Yeah.

How, so like, I love the framework that you've taken, but I'm throwing this challenge at you for the folks that are out there as we're all living that, which obviously generates some of the fear that you've been talking about. How do you manage that in the process as the acceleration continues? Because I'm certainly struggling with that in my own life.

Well, I think it's, I understand, Chris. I feel like we're all We all can relate to that. And that's where, again, coming back to being human and trying to understand the meaning, all of this, all the meaning underneath all of this is key. So that's where I think like those emotional intelligence skills are so critical now, now more than ever, right? How do I become more self-aware? How do I stay more present? You know, how do I learn to self-regulate in situations when there's fear everywhere? There's distraction. There's, it feels like the world's overwhelming. One day you're up and excited because you're working on With Claude or ChatGPT and everything's like, oh, you're feeling great about yourself. And then the next minute you feel like, oh gosh, like I feel like I'm this small and I have no place here. So it's, I think a lot of those skills are really important to develop. And I also think you mentioned identity. I think it's important to look at identity different. I mean, there's essence, right? Who I really am, who you really are deep down, like what makes you you, but then there's identity and identity can evolve. And I think a lot of people don't try on enough identities at times. So for example, I saw this quote the other day where somebody said, you know, I never thought of myself as an athlete, but I am starting to go to the gym 3 days a week and I'm starting to do things. And it's like, I think I'm an athlete. And I'm like, yeah, call yourself that. And that's where I go back to, like, if you can make leadership your identity, even if you're not the CEO at a company, that's fine. Make yourself a leader and figure out like what steps I want to take to continuously evolve. But I guess to answer your question, I really rely a lot on those emotional intelligence skills. How do I show more empathy? Ask more questions, listen. Maybe if I'm really frustrated or I don't agree with the person I'm working with, how can I respond rather than react? You know, sometimes you do have to react, right? You're just, you're going to step out in front on the street and you don't want to get hit by a bus. You're going to react, but sometimes you can respond, right? You're maybe getting You're not getting the answer you want, or you're not reaching the objective you want in a conversation, but you can maybe take a step back and learn to respond differently. Those are some of the things that I think will be very valuable right now in work. But it's scary. I'm not going to say like everybody I'm coaching right now is pretty much in the same boat where everybody's kind of trying to figure it out.

I love how Reid in this episode is helping us understand narrative intelligence, how we can keep up in this rapidly changing world of AI. And part of that is us as individuals, as leaders, as organizations taking ownership of where we are in our AI adoption and AI journey. And I see so frequently that organizations are not prepared for this next phase of autonomous agents where organizations will have a fleet of agents operating with agency in company infrastructure with access to critical systems. That's why I'm so privileged to be leading an amazing team of folks over at Prediction Guard. I founded the company 3 and a half years ago, and we provide an AI control plane that you run in your infrastructure to keep sovereign control over the agents' operating in your infrastructure. You can manage the supply chain on which those agents operate, the scoping of what they can access. You can institute runtime controls over the agent behavior, and you have a full set of operational components that help you keep track of agents that have been quarantined, agents that have gone off script, investigations into agent behavior. I would encourage you to check out what we're doing at Prediction predictionguard.com/practicalai. Book a time with myself and the team to help, help you understand what we're doing and really explore how you can adopt agents without losing control. That's predictionguard.com/practicalai. Again, predictionguard.com/practicalai.

Well, Reid, you, you started to go this direction, which I'm really curious about this this idea of identity and the identities that we take on and the roles that we're, you know, what we're trying to achieve in terms of outcome. And I think this brings up this tension where people are trying to figure out what is my uniquely human role within the world of AI? What is kind of preserved that artificial intelligence doesn't do, and maybe narrative intelligence and other forms of my own, you know, identity and role does, you know, does stay there. And I love, you know, I love that you're on coming from your background, kind of through storytelling, through acting, all of these things. I love the Tolkien letter where he's talking about this idea of like, as humans, We are sub-creators and we look around us and this kind of ultimate beauty is this sub-creation that we each are able to do. I'm wondering in your mind, what does that look like? Maybe even for yourself as you're thinking about, like, you're obviously entering into new ventures, you're doing new things with podcasts and other things that you're working on right now.

Yeah.

What is this idea of creation and creativity and like the uniquely human element of that? What does that mean to you now, given everything that's happening with AI?

Great question, Daniel. I would say right now, at first it was, I was probably like most people a little bit worried about like what AI, what's this, what does this mean for me and my identities I currently have? Now I look at it from a completely different lens. I love that book. I don't know if you've read it by Rick Rubin, The Creative Act. But like, if you really start to think, like step back from it, it's never been better to be a creator, an innovator, a human, right? When you really think of the tools and that are out there, we don't, you know, before there's so many different, you know, uh, barriers to get there, you know, whether you had to get, get a certain job, go maybe a certain school, had to have the certain skills. But now there's, it's never been better to learn these things. And so when I, and that's a great quote, uh, or that you mentioned, but I think of it right now as like, Almost anything's possible. And that's a great feeling. We'll have to be reeled back in at times, but it's a great place to allow yourself to go creatively and think like, who do I want to become? What do I want to do? What stories do I want to tell? What things do I want to build? What people do I want to work with? I think it's now, it's just a really awesome time to be from in that— go back. It's just a really great time to be a creator or an innovator. And so, yeah, so I, right now, like when I think of like the work I'm doing, it's just, I look at it just every day as like I'm learning. And the more you can step into just the growth mindset of just, I want to be curious. I want to ask questions. I want to be present and I just want to learn. And you step into that every day as a learner. It's a great place to be because everything's changing in a way that we've never imagined before. So yeah.

Yeah.

Just anecdotally, this, I don't know if this is really revealing too much to our audience, but I'm okay with being being a little vulnerable. So this last weekend, I was at the Indiana Bigfoot Conference, which was just amazing in every way. I would highly recommend attending if you're in the area.

This is for people with shoe sizes greater than 13, right?

Right, exactly. Yeah. So, I mean, just anecdotally, though, I was there, like, so I went last year, and I was there this year. And to hear the people there that were, you know, whatever random subculture topic that that is and they're into, the ways that they're thinking about applying AI to be creative, to do their research and explore this material and do this searching and accumulate this and create maps and do all these things.

Yes.

Even a year ago, You know, there, there was, it was obviously fun and cool, but they weren't talking in that way about maybe some of the same possibilities with technology. And I know that's a very random thing, but I think it connects with what you were saying that it's never, it's never better whether you're, you know, a software engineer or you're a member of the Indiana Bigfoot Research Organization to be able to like think creatively and apply You know, what, what you're—

I thought I knew you, man.

Yeah.

There you go.

I thought I knew you.

So, hey, hey, and, and Daniel, you knew I produced a Bigfoot film, don't you?

Oh, that's amazing. I didn't, I didn't know. Uh, yeah, I'll have to look at the credits on that one.

Yeah. So that was, uh, it's, I was, I spent a lot of time around Bigfoot research. I wish we had the tools we have today.

Exactly.

Um, I partnered with a, a guy named Eduardo Sanchez. He was, he's the director, creator of The Blair Witch Project and He had this great, really great script for years. It was a big budget script that he was trying to get made, had different attachments. Anyways, we decided at some point just to like go do the low budget version of it to get it out there because he was so passionate about Bigfoot. So yeah, I fell into that world for a while. But to your point, all the more reason that, yeah, you can be a software engineer and on the side you can be a musician, you can be a storyteller, you can create story worlds, you can be an author, you can do whatever you want nowadays. And I think that's important to realize with these tools that are out there.

I'm curious, as I As I circle around, uh, kind of on the conversation, and I wanted to ask, there are a lot of people, I, I think like certainly on when you talk to the 3 of us, it's, I think it's easy to get us onto this path to do this. You know, I was kind of like, hey, I'm kind of doing some things, but I need you to focus me and stuff. How, how do you get people in a harder sense? There's, there's a whole world of people out there who are feeling left behind.

Yeah. Yes.

And they're not doing AI podcasts, they're not listening to AI podcasts or watching AI podcasts. They're, they, and they are kind of grinding through the world as they have been doing their whole lives. And that, you know, I don't have data on this, but that's probably the majority of people out there. And how do you get them? I don't imagine it's a quick and super easy thing, but like, how do you get them to take the first step or two? It's a great question where you're like, you know, because we have a future going forward here and it's not just us. It is a whole lot of people in the masses. How do you, how would you recognizing it's all, I'm asking a really hard challenge. I know that.

Yeah.

How do you get that first? How do you get people to say, I'll take a first step into a larger, different world?

That's a great question. Thanks for asking that, Chris. And I say that because I feel like I'm living it with not only family members, you know, my parents or people that are even my age that maybe are in And I grew up in Texas, but even talking to different companies I'm coaching, their customers are in manufacturing or they're in rural cities. And he said there's a lot of fear around, like they don't like AI or they're a little bit, they're so worried about it. Maybe they're reading the news. And so I think one thing I found to work just recently is make it super simple and practical that fits, integrates into their life as it is. So for example, Do you like to cook? Is there a recipe you can come up with? There is, is there a restaurant you want to discover that you can kind of easily get them into asking questions, prompting, and then they start to get, it's just like the, it's a much better version of the internet from old. But the point being is I think once they start to see it work for them, like the other day or over the summer, we were planning a trip, like a reunion trip. And anyways, My parents were so afraid of AI and they were like, oh, I don't like what's going on in the world. And then we started doing this trip, we started planning out this trip, and within a matter of minutes we had like an itinerary of all the really cool places we wanted to do. And it just all of a sudden sparked their curiosity. They got creative. Well, what if we ask this? Can you ask it this question? And before you know it, you start to realize like, hey, it's pretty simple at the end of the day if you just want to start. And so I think to answer your question, the more you can ask questions to them that kind of ties it back to what they're interested in or motivated to do, the better. That's what I've found to be better.

Good advice. Yeah, I love that. I always recommend the same for like technical people trying to get into it. Maybe they're building their first agent. They're like, well, what do I do? My question is often, well, what are you interested in? Like, is it, you know, whatever, trading crypto or like collecting, you know, Pokémon cards, like create something that's related to the thing that you're passionate about.

Great.

And that's more useful.

Bigfoot for this episode.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Much research needed.

Are we going to find Bigfoot by the end of the week?

I hope so. You know, unless, unless it's an interdimensional being, uh, and then, then probably not. But yeah, this has been great, Reid. I want to maybe, like, as we get closer to an end here, we often ask our guests kind of, as you look to the future, you know, whatever time period that makes sense in your mind, you know, the next few months, the next year, whatever that is, what's kind of at the top of your mind around, it could be a set of challenges that you're thinking about in this area. It could be like something you're excited to dig into and explore more, where you see some of these things going. Does anything come to mind in terms of, yeah, when you end the day and you're thinking about those things moving forward, what comes to mind?

Great question. I think I'm a little bit of a dreamer, Daniel. I've always been, I think it's one of the reasons I got into film was, I was sort of an introvert and I was really into sports, but I really wanted to like learn to express myself. So I always come back to ways that people can tell their story. I envision a world and I've started to reimagine the brand I started called The Lesson, which is really like, imagine like a world that almost felt like, you know, you could tap into people's stories and lives almost like you do a Netflix show. Or whatever. It doesn't have to be necessarily a long form, but imagine ways that we can connect, we can tell stories, we can become, you know, again, these different identities in a way that becomes just really beautiful and rich to see and to where we feel kind of part of something bigger and as a whole. And I say that only, I hope that's a world that we can get to, but it's certainly with the tools that are out there right now, it certainly seems like there will be some extraordinary ways to lift humanity in the future. And it might be a lot here a lot sooner than we think. So I go back to, to answer your question, I go back to a lot of the dreams and sort of vision I had around storytelling and how to move people.

That's great.

Well, I hope to have you back on the show in the future to talk through all of those things. And as you've highlighted, things will look different. in the future than we can even predict and not something to be afraid of, but something to lean into and, you know, make, make part of your story.

So, so happy that you could join us and share that with us. Thanks for joining, Reid.

Thank you so much, Daniel. Thank you, Chris. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

All right. That's our show for this week. If you haven't checked out our website, head to practicalai.fm and be sure to connect with us on LinkedIn, X, or Bluesky. You'll see us posting insights related to the latest AI developments, and we would love for you to join the conversation. Thanks to our partner Prediction Guard for providing operational support for the show. Check them out at predictionguard.com. Also, thanks to Breakmaster Cylinder for the beats and to you for listening. That's all for now. Bye. But you'll hear from us again next week.