Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
iHeart Media Presents CEOs. You should know. All right, welcome
to iHeartMedia Charleston CEOs. You should know where we highlight
great people doing big things right here in the low Country.
I got to tell you if you have dreams or
in the process of starting a business, have an idea,
you will want to lean in Today's someone that started
first company at sixteen has been partner, founder, CEO numerous companies.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I believe it was six, Patrick, Yes, yes, yeah, well
I started eight, but but six got to a point
where we should talk about them, right.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Well, Patrick Bryant, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming in.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Thank you awesome.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Well, I typically list off everything someone's involved in, but
we want to highlight you. We don't want to hear
me talk for twenty minutes. So if you want to
just kind of give a background, I mean, starting your
first company at sixteen, you have an entrepreneurial spirit. Just
caught a serial entrepreneur, which sounds negative, but it's super
interesting just from our conversation prior to this recording, So
(00:54):
kind of talk from the age of sixteen to today
and just how do you define an entrepreneurial spirit like
you have?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Well, it was a long journey for me. At sixteen,
I was starting a business that was just selling my time.
My family filed bankruptcy when I was sixteen from a
newspaper startup that my dad had done, and I learned
so much. I mean, I took away my entire life
(01:21):
mission from that moment. I remember telling a friend at
that time, if my takeaway feels like it's supposed to be,
never start a business. And my dad had started his
first business there at fifty and I really had that
first thought. But then I told my friend, I was like,
(01:41):
you know what, though, I truly feel the opposite. I
feel like I want to start businesses now when I've
got nothing to lose, and I just want to keep
starting them until I win. I was so jazzed by
helping my dad and my mom start that newspaper. It
(02:02):
energized me in these incredible ways. On the other hand,
my family filed bankruptcy. It was by far the deepest,
darkest moment of my life at that time, and I
had all this pain. So it was this this really
bizarre moment of finding this thing that I absolutely loved
(02:25):
and then having it hurt me in a really a
really painful way that that dug into my soul, and honestly,
I call it my you know, my my baby superhero
moment where I was just like, man, I just want
to do this. I don't know what it takes to
become a really good entrepreneur. Matter of fact, back then
(02:46):
we didn't say entrepreneur small businessman, but what we said
and I said, you know, I just want to own
my own business, and I don't see a path that
I don't so I didn't know anything, and I took
the computers from the failed business since we filed bankruptcy.
The computers ended up at sitting at my house and
I started a little print shop doing desktop publishing and
(03:10):
helping small businesses with their menus and logos. And I
was just selling my time. I didn't know the first
thing about business at sixteen, but it was a start
and it taught me what ultimately got me to where
I am today, having now founded eight businesses, six of
which went on to pass the million dollar mark.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
How much of seeing the failure, going through the pain,
but realizing I can fail and still be okay? How
important is that to the process.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
I don't I don't know, I mean emotionally it hurt
a lot, and going through bankruptcy and being a young
guy who thought a lot of things were there that
then evaporated. Certainly, certainly, you know, put me in a
(04:02):
space that as a as an entrepreneur, I normally come
to the exercises with a lot of caution. I also
joke that I'm a Carolina gamecock. And one of the
beauties of being a game cock is while we're good
at business, is because we can be up twenty one
to seven in the fourth and we're all sitting in
(04:23):
the stands going, hey, hey, hang on, hang on, we
can still screw this up. Right now, Let's see how
it is. We got every chance of losing this game
right now. I'm kidding, of course, But the reality is,
I do come to these exercises saying, how do we
launch very minimally, how do we test the market to
(04:44):
see if somebody cares, and then how do we provide
them a product that's really bringing them a lot of
value for what we're providing at that cost, so that
we can replicate that over and over again. And now
that I have that formula. It took me years to
understand that formula, but now that I have that formula,
(05:05):
I can execute it very quickly and with a lot
more let's say, fun and energy than the grind that
I felt when I was sixteen. At Go Cox by
the way, thank you, yeah yeah, Go game Cocks. I
love this guy.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
So you're telling you come from a media background, right,
you saw opportunity in the media space, Go to Team.
We talked a little bit about that, about how you
solve problems for production and filming and things like that
to now more of the tech side today. So when
you look for a startup or look for opportunity, what
does that migration look like from starting in media then
into tech.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Well, so, I was a broadcast journalism major and had
worked at the local television station in Columbia, Wis. And
I made a network of fantastic friends. Dwayne Scott my
co founder in that company. I founded it when we
were when I was twenty four, and uh, Dwayne was
(06:04):
a mentor of mine at the time, and and I
just had this passion to to see him be able
to to shoot the assignments that that he needed to
be on. And I saw a vision for helping the
networks with video crews around the southeast, and so Dwayne
and I packaged it up two men in a truck
one hundred thousand dollars SBA note and had had a
(06:28):
moment that we we were do or die. You know,
you got to go out there and and sell back.
Then it was started with four shoot days a month
we needed and now our company today is responsible for
about six thousand a year. I mean, we we true, true,
true line. It's almost impossible that you haven't seen our
(06:50):
footage on TV. You just didn't know it was was ours.
You were watching those name, you were watching Good Morning America,
you were watching Ghost Adventures on h Discovery Channel, Legacy
List on PBS, the brand new Lebron James co production
we're doing called Uninterrupted on Vice. We just we just
(07:14):
touch a lot of television, super Bowl World Series, Ilian Gonzales,
Monica Lewinsky. I mean, we've been on just a ton
of television for twenty five years now, and the scale
is impressive and interesting, but it all goes back to
an incredibly simple task, which is create trust with the clients.
(07:40):
In this case, the networks, ask them what they need
and deliver it in a way that they can be
proud that they used you and and that, and and
sometimes you're going to get it wrong. And when you
get it wrong, say, man, that didn't feel good, and
I'm sorry. I want to make it right and how
do we move to the the next thing? And those
(08:01):
clients will will accept that moment. But but some of
my darkest entrepreneurial moments have been when we didn't deliver
on what I thought we should deliver and and and
those hurt, to be quite honest, and and so I
try to come at it from a really sincere place
of what can we provide uh, and and how can
(08:24):
we do it correctly? And if we do it correctly,
celebrate and if we don't learn and do it right
the next time. And so as you look at scale,
I mean, excuse me, my career of of scale from
from a small you know, production company with two guys
in a truck to to now sixteen offices around the
(08:47):
US and one hundred and forty full time equivalents f
to ease that, you know, it was a journey of
learning to get it right, learning to listen to the client,
learning to build trust and and provide provide good services.
And what I figured out though was along the route,
(09:12):
is that I love software. Media is where I started,
and I certainly feel passionate about journalism and and and
getting stories right and ethics and and those things for sure,
But software allows us to move so much faster and
make such a larger impact on our customers and quite frankly,
(09:36):
in this current moment, save them so much money. I mean,
it is so much easier to bring value in our
current software company than it whatever was in any of
our are still is in our media companies. I love them,
they're they're fantastic and and I won't u stop loving them.
(10:00):
But if you said to me, Patrick, what is the
number one way you can help a business owner entrepreneur,
which is my passion in life helping entrepreneurs, what's the
number one way you can help them? I would tell
you deploy AI inside of their existing business today. If
I do that for them, I will help them grow,
(10:23):
and I will help them better serve their client, and
I will reduce their costs by a magnitude. I mean,
we're not talking. Oh, we met with a customer yesterday
in our AI voice agent business and we looked at
their bill and they were being charged seventy five hundred
dollars a month. For a service that we're going to
(10:46):
replace and it's going to end up costing them less
than two thousand dollars a month. And I almost just
said I think we're done here, right. I mean I
literally got up and acted like I was going to
walk out of the meeting, because it's like, what, what
do you need to know? I mean, when you're reducing
their cost by that level of magnitude, people just you know,
(11:08):
get incredibly excited. And I do too because I want
to help them grow.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Yeah, And we talked about it earlier about you know,
you gave a speech about it yesterday workforce Wave, and
I think that's the top of mind for not just
people in business but the general public. Yes, what implications
will AI bring to business? And I think you spoke
about the efficiency, the cost effectiveness. We talked about how
AI doesn't have bad days. It doesn't you know, it's
up at two am, but it's back at six am.
(11:32):
Talk a little bit about some of the errors you
think it will impact the most.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Well, I think there's this incredibly simple one that is
a magic trick as it sounds right now, but it's
going to replace a lot of rote task, which is
our voice agents. This this idea that a person needs
to answer the phone, or worse yet, a call attendant
(11:57):
needs to answer the phone. I mean these call attendants
press one for sales and two for book keeping. Oh
my gosh, when I try not to get them on
the phone, but when I do, I immediately roll my
eyes and I'm sure listeners do. And so what we
have created is this AI voice agent that will know
everything about your business through the knowledge base, be able
(12:19):
to answer all the basic questions, do it in a
way that's happy and on brand voice for your business.
Integrate with your calendar, so it can you know, connect
with that person, get their name and email, and put
a put a date on your calendar for you to
go explore their their roof, or take them on a
(12:41):
phishing charter or whatever your business is doing. And the
AI can do all of that, and it can do
it at two am, so they're not leaving a message
and you're calling them back in the morning at two am.
The person is getting what they need out of your business,
which is a booking on your phishing charter. And you
wake up in the morning you got a booking. You
know it's done. There's no next step it's the next
(13:03):
step is take them on the fishing charter. They're already sold.
They learned about your business, they they they book the charter,
and it's really it's really exciting to me to see
how technology is going to continue to drive business in
those positive ways. Having said that, I will just put
(13:25):
a little astick on it, because I get this question constantly.
I do not think it's gonna replace employees. I think employee.
We have employees that I know we're replacing their time
with these AI tools. And I absolutely every time think, oh, okay,
well Mark just got freed up from doing that task. Well,
(13:46):
what are we going to have Mark do now? I'm
not getting rid of Mark. Mark's freaking great. I just
need to take crappy jobs off Mark's plates so he
can go do the next thing. Right. And the beauty
of the AI agent is is she he? Whatever voice
we want to give it, I'll say she, uh, British,
right exactly he, I'll switch to he, just whatever he she.
(14:09):
They can speak Spanish, Portuguese, whatever language, French you want
them to on the fly. They don't call in sick,
they don't need to be retrained when they move up
or out of your organization. They are happy every single day,
and if no one calls, they cost you zero. And
if sixty people call it one moment, sixty of them
(14:32):
scale up. No one gets voicemail. That's that's impossible in
any other scenario. And they're so good that I'm just it.
Literally is my favorite thing right now is launching this
company and just in the grind of learning the technology
and making it really work for these clients of ours.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Yeah, I agree with you on al because I think
that the greatest placement implication of it are the tasks
that nobody wanted to do anyway. It's the things that
are the biggest time sucks, the things that you have
to do repeatedly that you just don't have time for.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
I totally agree.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
So you have all this knowledge, you're a head of trends,
you're on the cutting edge. You also help businesses grow, build,
do business plans A to Z, and you've helped six
hundred I think you said six hundred clients or businesses.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Well, to be clear, that six hundred number is a
reference to the Harbor Entrepreneur Center, which you're talking about.
That's certainly not all me. I love it in every
way possible. But I was just a co founder ten
eleven years ago now, and John Osborne and I started
(15:41):
that together after the Chamber had taken a trip to Nashville.
We had seen the Nashville Entrepreneur Center and we came
home and we're like, look, this community needs this. Entrepreneurs
need help. At that point, my business was my media
company was about fifteen years old, and as I had started,
I didn't feel like I had a lot of resources.
(16:02):
I felt very siloed as an entrepreneur. And so when
we got home, I thought, man, this is something Charleston needs.
And we worked at with the accelerator initially and then
later the whole center and today forty thousand square feet
(16:22):
of office space over off of Johnny Dodds, and sixty
businesses operating out of the Harbor Entrepreneur Center. Eight of
them are inside of an accelerator program that get free
mentorship and rounds of investment. And excited about that that
program and the fact that the Harbor just continues to
(16:46):
help these businesses. I'm right now at this moment, I'm
past chair. I'll be I'll be what just maybe just
a board member, or maybe they'll keep me off the
board now that I've done, but I'll be past here
this year and and as of the end of the year,
i'll finally roll off. And but I just looked to
(17:07):
the scale and the growth and the things that's done
to the community, and I couldn't be more proud of
having been involved in the beginning.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
How common is it for a center like yours to
give actual space to the businesses and not just assistance
and help and consultancy.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Well, and if you get in the accelerator, you get
free space, mentorship, access to investors, and so that that
There are other accelerators around the US that do that.
Most of them are not nonprofit. They're they're there to
to take equity in the company. And uh, and I
think that's a healthy thing. In Charleston, we've got this
nonprofit version that I think is is really cool and
(17:44):
a little bit more more rare. But but you you
see a lot of communities offer free space to entrepreneurs.
The only problem is entrepreneurs don't need just space. And
and that was always my argument as we were we're
working on entrepreneurial exercises before the Harbor existed in helping
(18:05):
the community, because every community would try to give space,
and I'd be like, you know, look, they don't need
free space. They're happy to pay rent. If they've got customers,
they're down for rent. What they need is community and
mentorship and connection to other entrepreneurs. And so that's why
the mission of the Harbor, from the very beginning, the
(18:26):
mission has always been to create collision among the entrepreneurs
of Charleston. Because if we create collision and we introduce
to entrepreneurs, you really don't need to do a lot more.
You know, entrepreneurs by definition are self driving and they
will go do if you'll just get them the resources
(18:48):
that they need and the opportunity. And then my final
plug there that I always like to say that anybody's
this listening in Charleston is people always say how can
I help entrepreneurs it in Charleston? And my line is, well,
then do business with an entrepreneur. There's an entrepreneur right
now trying to sell you sheets for your your airbnb company,
(19:13):
or you know, a software program for your construction company,
and you can either buy it from a software company
that's out of you know, California, or you can help
the startup that's in Charleston, get a customer and grow,
And that, to me is the number one way we
can all help entrepreneurship. Find one and just do business
(19:36):
with them. Don't even know. I'm not even telling you to.
You know, it's not charitable. You're going to get a
product for it. Just give them a chance, supports the dream.
Who would you say, is there somebody in your life
has had the most impact on your entrepreneur of spirit,
your leadership. Well, for sure, my parents. I mean there's
no doubt I talked about that negative moment, but that
(19:59):
negative moment, moment of the bankruptcy was a moment in time.
And if you look at the rest of what my
parents taught me, Uh, my mom is a sales oriented
person who sold everything from IBM computers to cell phones
(20:20):
to you know, being a real estate agent. And she
was just always hustling and selling. And I saw it
and understood it and and could process, uh, at an
early age what she was doing. And she taught me
things like who Tony Robbins was and and to understand, uh,
the the the ideas that you put in your head
(20:42):
or the are the things you're gonna go do? And
and man, you know, she just taught me a lot.
And then on the other side was my dad, who
was this incredibly hard working company man who understood his business.
But you know something that just resonated my entire life
was my dad. I would go into these newspapers that
(21:05):
had been clients and my dad for years, and you
know what, they would pull me aside his customers and
they would say, you know, I've known your dad for
fifteen years, and I just want you to know he's
the most sincere want to help guy I've ever met.
And he doesn't cuss, he doesn't drink, and I love him.
(21:27):
And when your customers are saying that to your kid
in private, like you know, you're living a life that
you can be proud of, you know. And so that's
what I always wanted, was was for customers to feel
that way about us in our businesses.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Yeah, I think that's that's in South Carolina would call
that a stand up guy all the time. If you
know you're doing business with a great person. If somebody
calls him a stand up.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Guy, my dad's a stand up guy, that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
So is there anything that you were reading watching that
that kind of impacts decision making? Leadership.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
My number one thing is to go to the future
in the present. That's what I'm currently working on. And
the idea is pretty simple. It's taking off of the
guys from y Combinator, who's sort of birth this idea
of living the future and look left and right and
(22:21):
see what's missing and build a business around that. And
I completely agree with that and have sort of adopted
that in my life. I try to listen to music
that's been written in the last four years. That's a
rule I have. I drive at Tesla, I have full
self driving. I just got twelve point five for the
geeks out there, and my car drives itself. I use
(22:46):
door Dash and Instacart and and all the things in
an attempt sincerely in these AI Voice agents or another
place where I just want to be doing things that
ninety seven percent of the population aren't doing yet. Now
they're going to be doing them. I am certain that,
(23:07):
you know, if three percent of America are having their
car drive them places right now, the ninety seven percent
will get there within five years. So within five years,
you know, I think everyone in America will be having
a car drive them somewhere, either through a way mow
type deal or their car they own, and that to
(23:28):
me means that that's a prediction that I feel very
certain of for five years from now. Maybe it could
take ten. You could argue with me that it could
take ten to get to that, And what I would
say to you that if if you even say that
it'll take ten, well, then that means I'm living ten
years in the future. Right now. I think I'm living
five years in the future. But you want to argue
(23:49):
with me and tell me that I'm living ten, sure,
But the reality is I want to go to the
future in the present and I want to live there
and I want to feel all that space, and then
I want to show other people what the future looks
like and help help shape that because that's what I'm
that's what I'm reading, that's what I'm I'm focused on.
(24:11):
I mean, if you you pull up my YouTube today,
you're going to see a lot of videos about uh
AI and implementing it in business and understanding software uh
tricks around AI. And I don't expect all my customers
to go read all that stuff, right I need to
read it because I'm the one living in the future
of AI. But I need to bring that future to them.
(24:32):
And so that's what I sell other entrepreneurs on as
I'm speaking right now, is if you're an accountant, you
can you can go to the future in the present,
which is be on the bleeding edge of understanding the
laws that are coming down the books, be on the
bleeding edge of the software in accounting. Do the things
that allow you to be ahead of every other you know,
(24:56):
accountant in that space, and you are going to in
almost definition. The story that I love is that Bill
Gates saw chat GPT a year and a half before
anyone else, I mean anyone else. He saw it. He
was within a group of you know, twenty five people
that knew it existed in the world for a year
(25:18):
and a half. Now, I'm not the world's best businessman,
but i can tell you I'll gladly pay a dollar
for next week's Wall Street Journal, Like no brainer, right.
So if you can, if you can be in the
future and know that chat GPT's coming out a year
and a half from now, and use that to go
(25:38):
build your business, put those tools in place, help your
friends and colleagues understand what's coming down the pipe, and
you are almost always going to win and so for me,
that's that's my current current passion. I mean, I know
there's a lot of people out that are that are
just like, man, I just want to really start a business,
and I need to make money, and I need to
(26:00):
get away from maybe a job I don't love or whatever.
And sometimes I end up saying these things that are like,
you know, live in the future, and they're like, man,
I just need to start a business, and and I
believe in that and block and tackle I think is
is you have to do it. But I also, you know,
just passionately believe that as we continue to get to
(26:21):
this place in business, we can we can live in
the future, create products that that are futuristic, and in
doing so really help other businesses grow and succeed.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
I think that's some of the most interesting advice I've
ever heard. Thanks you look into the future now and
look left and right. Yeah, I think that's pretty powerful quote.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Yeah, yeah, I mean those guys are are brilliant. There's
you can you can google it. That's that particular quote
is Paul Graham. No, I wish Pau Graham's done some
amazing things and and he's one of the founders of
why Combinator. Look that up and they have a whole
school around entrepreneurship. I've expounded on the idea a lot
(27:06):
and and in the speech that I give on it,
it you know, there's a lot more, a lot more
nuggets in there, but that was the original, That was
the original impetus and and I believe it, you know,
in a in a big, big way, is just looking
at looking at what's coming down the pipe and helping.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
You know.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
There's another great quote which is the best way to
predict the future is to invent it. And and I
think that that that really is is what we need
to be focused on, especially as it pertains to AI,
because while there are some negative capabilities that and some
concerns around AI and what will deploy will be there
(27:47):
and we'll be the one shaping it. And we, you know,
we need to we need to do need to put
our rails in place and use it ethically in all
the things.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Well, we can do this for an hour, and I
think there's a lot of people that will want to
hear more. What's your YouTube handle?
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Uh? Well, so I don't put a lot up on YouTube.
Most of my stuff is on Instagram and Facebook, but
on Instagram. I'm b Patrick Bryant. The same thing on Facebook,
Patrick Bryant. I put a lot up on LinkedIn too,
so I'm Patrick Bryant at LinkedIn, so those are LinkedIn
is probably the best place to hit me up if
(28:20):
somebody's looking to contact me.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Awesome. Well, I know if you're listening today and you
have any kind of dreams under everybody's thought of something eventually,
but just hearing about AI and some of the ways
that you look at business and getting ahead of trends,
I think that there's been something for everyone here today.
Thank you, Patrick, really really appreciate you joining iHeartMedia. Charleston
CEOs you should know, love it. Thank you so much
for having me. You've been listening to iHeart Radios.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
CEOs you should know, heard every Tuesday and Saturday morning
right here on this iHeart Radio station.
iHeart Media Presents CEOs. You should know. All right, welcome
to iHeartMedia Charleston CEOs. You should know where we highlight
great people doing big things right here in the low Country.
I got to tell you if you have dreams or
in the process of starting a business, have an idea,
you will want to lean in Today's someone that started
first company at sixteen has been partner, founder, CEO numerous companies.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I believe it was six, Patrick, Yes, yes, yeah, well
I started eight, but but six got to a point
where we should talk about them, right.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Well, Patrick Bryant, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming in.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Thank you awesome.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Well, I typically list off everything someone's involved in, but
we want to highlight you. We don't want to hear
me talk for twenty minutes. So if you want to
just kind of give a background, I mean, starting your
first company at sixteen, you have an entrepreneurial spirit. Just
caught a serial entrepreneur, which sounds negative, but it's super
interesting just from our conversation prior to this recording, So
(00:54):
kind of talk from the age of sixteen to today
and just how do you define an entrepreneurial spirit like
you have?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Well, it was a long journey for me. At sixteen,
I was starting a business that was just selling my time.
My family filed bankruptcy when I was sixteen from a
newspaper startup that my dad had done, and I learned
so much. I mean, I took away my entire life
(01:21):
mission from that moment. I remember telling a friend at
that time, if my takeaway feels like it's supposed to be,
never start a business. And my dad had started his
first business there at fifty and I really had that
first thought. But then I told my friend, I was like,
(01:41):
you know what, though, I truly feel the opposite. I
feel like I want to start businesses now when I've
got nothing to lose, and I just want to keep
starting them until I win. I was so jazzed by
helping my dad and my mom start that newspaper. It
(02:02):
energized me in these incredible ways. On the other hand,
my family filed bankruptcy. It was by far the deepest,
darkest moment of my life at that time, and I
had all this pain. So it was this this really
bizarre moment of finding this thing that I absolutely loved
(02:25):
and then having it hurt me in a really a
really painful way that that dug into my soul, and honestly,
I call it my you know, my my baby superhero
moment where I was just like, man, I just want
to do this. I don't know what it takes to
become a really good entrepreneur. Matter of fact, back then
(02:46):
we didn't say entrepreneur small businessman, but what we said
and I said, you know, I just want to own
my own business, and I don't see a path that
I don't so I didn't know anything, and I took
the computers from the failed business since we filed bankruptcy.
The computers ended up at sitting at my house and
I started a little print shop doing desktop publishing and
(03:10):
helping small businesses with their menus and logos. And I
was just selling my time. I didn't know the first
thing about business at sixteen, but it was a start
and it taught me what ultimately got me to where
I am today, having now founded eight businesses, six of
which went on to pass the million dollar mark.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
How much of seeing the failure, going through the pain,
but realizing I can fail and still be okay? How
important is that to the process.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
I don't I don't know, I mean emotionally it hurt
a lot, and going through bankruptcy and being a young
guy who thought a lot of things were there that
then evaporated. Certainly, certainly, you know, put me in a
(04:02):
space that as a as an entrepreneur, I normally come
to the exercises with a lot of caution. I also
joke that I'm a Carolina gamecock. And one of the
beauties of being a game cock is while we're good
at business, is because we can be up twenty one
to seven in the fourth and we're all sitting in
(04:23):
the stands going, hey, hey, hang on, hang on, we
can still screw this up. Right now, Let's see how
it is. We got every chance of losing this game
right now. I'm kidding, of course, But the reality is,
I do come to these exercises saying, how do we
launch very minimally, how do we test the market to
(04:44):
see if somebody cares, and then how do we provide
them a product that's really bringing them a lot of
value for what we're providing at that cost, so that
we can replicate that over and over again. And now
that I have that formula. It took me years to
understand that formula, but now that I have that formula,
(05:05):
I can execute it very quickly and with a lot
more let's say, fun and energy than the grind that
I felt when I was sixteen. At Go Cox by
the way, thank you, yeah yeah, Go game Cocks. I
love this guy.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
So you're telling you come from a media background, right,
you saw opportunity in the media space, Go to Team.
We talked a little bit about that, about how you
solve problems for production and filming and things like that
to now more of the tech side today. So when
you look for a startup or look for opportunity, what
does that migration look like from starting in media then
into tech.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Well, so, I was a broadcast journalism major and had
worked at the local television station in Columbia, Wis. And
I made a network of fantastic friends. Dwayne Scott my
co founder in that company. I founded it when we
were when I was twenty four, and uh, Dwayne was
(06:04):
a mentor of mine at the time, and and I
just had this passion to to see him be able
to to shoot the assignments that that he needed to
be on. And I saw a vision for helping the
networks with video crews around the southeast, and so Dwayne
and I packaged it up two men in a truck
one hundred thousand dollars SBA note and had had a
(06:28):
moment that we we were do or die. You know,
you got to go out there and and sell back.
Then it was started with four shoot days a month
we needed and now our company today is responsible for
about six thousand a year. I mean, we we true, true,
true line. It's almost impossible that you haven't seen our
(06:50):
footage on TV. You just didn't know it was was ours.
You were watching those name, you were watching Good Morning America,
you were watching Ghost Adventures on h Discovery Channel, Legacy
List on PBS, the brand new Lebron James co production
we're doing called Uninterrupted on Vice. We just we just
(07:14):
touch a lot of television, super Bowl World Series, Ilian Gonzales,
Monica Lewinsky. I mean, we've been on just a ton
of television for twenty five years now, and the scale
is impressive and interesting, but it all goes back to
an incredibly simple task, which is create trust with the clients.
(07:40):
In this case, the networks, ask them what they need
and deliver it in a way that they can be
proud that they used you and and that, and and
sometimes you're going to get it wrong. And when you
get it wrong, say, man, that didn't feel good, and
I'm sorry. I want to make it right and how
do we move to the the next thing? And those
(08:01):
clients will will accept that moment. But but some of
my darkest entrepreneurial moments have been when we didn't deliver
on what I thought we should deliver and and and
those hurt, to be quite honest, and and so I
try to come at it from a really sincere place
of what can we provide uh, and and how can
(08:24):
we do it correctly? And if we do it correctly,
celebrate and if we don't learn and do it right
the next time. And so as you look at scale,
I mean, excuse me, my career of of scale from
from a small you know, production company with two guys
in a truck to to now sixteen offices around the
(08:47):
US and one hundred and forty full time equivalents f
to ease that, you know, it was a journey of
learning to get it right, learning to listen to the client,
learning to build trust and and provide provide good services.
And what I figured out though was along the route,
(09:12):
is that I love software. Media is where I started,
and I certainly feel passionate about journalism and and and
getting stories right and ethics and and those things for sure,
But software allows us to move so much faster and
make such a larger impact on our customers and quite frankly,
(09:36):
in this current moment, save them so much money. I mean,
it is so much easier to bring value in our
current software company than it whatever was in any of
our are still is in our media companies. I love them,
they're they're fantastic and and I won't u stop loving them.
(10:00):
But if you said to me, Patrick, what is the
number one way you can help a business owner entrepreneur,
which is my passion in life helping entrepreneurs, what's the
number one way you can help them? I would tell
you deploy AI inside of their existing business today. If
I do that for them, I will help them grow,
(10:23):
and I will help them better serve their client, and
I will reduce their costs by a magnitude. I mean,
we're not talking. Oh, we met with a customer yesterday
in our AI voice agent business and we looked at
their bill and they were being charged seventy five hundred
dollars a month. For a service that we're going to
(10:46):
replace and it's going to end up costing them less
than two thousand dollars a month. And I almost just
said I think we're done here, right. I mean I
literally got up and acted like I was going to
walk out of the meeting, because it's like, what, what
do you need to know? I mean, when you're reducing
their cost by that level of magnitude, people just you know,
(11:08):
get incredibly excited. And I do too because I want
to help them grow.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Yeah, And we talked about it earlier about you know,
you gave a speech about it yesterday workforce Wave, and
I think that's the top of mind for not just
people in business but the general public. Yes, what implications
will AI bring to business? And I think you spoke
about the efficiency, the cost effectiveness. We talked about how
AI doesn't have bad days. It doesn't you know, it's
up at two am, but it's back at six am.
(11:32):
Talk a little bit about some of the errors you
think it will impact the most.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Well, I think there's this incredibly simple one that is
a magic trick as it sounds right now, but it's
going to replace a lot of rote task, which is
our voice agents. This this idea that a person needs
to answer the phone, or worse yet, a call attendant
(11:57):
needs to answer the phone. I mean these call attendants
press one for sales and two for book keeping. Oh
my gosh, when I try not to get them on
the phone, but when I do, I immediately roll my
eyes and I'm sure listeners do. And so what we
have created is this AI voice agent that will know
everything about your business through the knowledge base, be able
(12:19):
to answer all the basic questions, do it in a
way that's happy and on brand voice for your business.
Integrate with your calendar, so it can you know, connect
with that person, get their name and email, and put
a put a date on your calendar for you to
go explore their their roof, or take them on a
(12:41):
phishing charter or whatever your business is doing. And the
AI can do all of that, and it can do
it at two am, so they're not leaving a message
and you're calling them back in the morning at two am.
The person is getting what they need out of your business,
which is a booking on your phishing charter. And you
wake up in the morning you got a booking. You
know it's done. There's no next step it's the next
(13:03):
step is take them on the fishing charter. They're already sold.
They learned about your business, they they they book the charter,
and it's really it's really exciting to me to see
how technology is going to continue to drive business in
those positive ways. Having said that, I will just put
(13:25):
a little astick on it, because I get this question constantly.
I do not think it's gonna replace employees. I think employee.
We have employees that I know we're replacing their time
with these AI tools. And I absolutely every time think, oh, okay,
well Mark just got freed up from doing that task. Well,
(13:46):
what are we going to have Mark do now? I'm
not getting rid of Mark. Mark's freaking great. I just
need to take crappy jobs off Mark's plates so he
can go do the next thing. Right. And the beauty
of the AI agent is is she he? Whatever voice
we want to give it, I'll say she, uh, British,
right exactly he, I'll switch to he, just whatever he she.
(14:09):
They can speak Spanish, Portuguese, whatever language, French you want
them to on the fly. They don't call in sick,
they don't need to be retrained when they move up
or out of your organization. They are happy every single day,
and if no one calls, they cost you zero. And
if sixty people call it one moment, sixty of them
(14:32):
scale up. No one gets voicemail. That's that's impossible in
any other scenario. And they're so good that I'm just it.
Literally is my favorite thing right now is launching this
company and just in the grind of learning the technology
and making it really work for these clients of ours.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Yeah, I agree with you on al because I think
that the greatest placement implication of it are the tasks
that nobody wanted to do anyway. It's the things that
are the biggest time sucks, the things that you have
to do repeatedly that you just don't have time for.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
I totally agree.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
So you have all this knowledge, you're a head of trends,
you're on the cutting edge. You also help businesses grow, build,
do business plans A to Z, and you've helped six
hundred I think you said six hundred clients or businesses.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Well, to be clear, that six hundred number is a
reference to the Harbor Entrepreneur Center, which you're talking about.
That's certainly not all me. I love it in every
way possible. But I was just a co founder ten
eleven years ago now, and John Osborne and I started
(15:41):
that together after the Chamber had taken a trip to Nashville.
We had seen the Nashville Entrepreneur Center and we came
home and we're like, look, this community needs this. Entrepreneurs
need help. At that point, my business was my media
company was about fifteen years old, and as I had started,
I didn't feel like I had a lot of resources.
(16:02):
I felt very siloed as an entrepreneur. And so when
we got home, I thought, man, this is something Charleston needs.
And we worked at with the accelerator initially and then
later the whole center and today forty thousand square feet
(16:22):
of office space over off of Johnny Dodds, and sixty
businesses operating out of the Harbor Entrepreneur Center. Eight of
them are inside of an accelerator program that get free
mentorship and rounds of investment. And excited about that that
program and the fact that the Harbor just continues to
(16:46):
help these businesses. I'm right now at this moment, I'm
past chair. I'll be I'll be what just maybe just
a board member, or maybe they'll keep me off the
board now that I've done, but I'll be past here
this year and and as of the end of the year,
i'll finally roll off. And but I just looked to
(17:07):
the scale and the growth and the things that's done
to the community, and I couldn't be more proud of
having been involved in the beginning.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
How common is it for a center like yours to
give actual space to the businesses and not just assistance
and help and consultancy.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Well, and if you get in the accelerator, you get
free space, mentorship, access to investors, and so that that
There are other accelerators around the US that do that.
Most of them are not nonprofit. They're they're there to
to take equity in the company. And uh, and I
think that's a healthy thing. In Charleston, we've got this
nonprofit version that I think is is really cool and
(17:44):
a little bit more more rare. But but you you
see a lot of communities offer free space to entrepreneurs.
The only problem is entrepreneurs don't need just space. And
and that was always my argument as we were we're
working on entrepreneurial exercises before the Harbor existed in helping
(18:05):
the community, because every community would try to give space,
and I'd be like, you know, look, they don't need
free space. They're happy to pay rent. If they've got customers,
they're down for rent. What they need is community and
mentorship and connection to other entrepreneurs. And so that's why
the mission of the Harbor, from the very beginning, the
(18:26):
mission has always been to create collision among the entrepreneurs
of Charleston. Because if we create collision and we introduce
to entrepreneurs, you really don't need to do a lot more.
You know, entrepreneurs by definition are self driving and they
will go do if you'll just get them the resources
(18:48):
that they need and the opportunity. And then my final
plug there that I always like to say that anybody's
this listening in Charleston is people always say how can
I help entrepreneurs it in Charleston? And my line is, well,
then do business with an entrepreneur. There's an entrepreneur right
now trying to sell you sheets for your your airbnb company,
(19:13):
or you know, a software program for your construction company,
and you can either buy it from a software company
that's out of you know, California, or you can help
the startup that's in Charleston, get a customer and grow,
And that, to me is the number one way we
can all help entrepreneurship. Find one and just do business
(19:36):
with them. Don't even know. I'm not even telling you to.
You know, it's not charitable. You're going to get a
product for it. Just give them a chance, supports the dream.
Who would you say, is there somebody in your life
has had the most impact on your entrepreneur of spirit,
your leadership. Well, for sure, my parents. I mean there's
no doubt I talked about that negative moment, but that
(19:59):
negative moment, moment of the bankruptcy was a moment in time.
And if you look at the rest of what my
parents taught me, Uh, my mom is a sales oriented
person who sold everything from IBM computers to cell phones
(20:20):
to you know, being a real estate agent. And she
was just always hustling and selling. And I saw it
and understood it and and could process, uh, at an
early age what she was doing. And she taught me
things like who Tony Robbins was and and to understand, uh,
the the the ideas that you put in your head
(20:42):
or the are the things you're gonna go do? And
and man, you know, she just taught me a lot.
And then on the other side was my dad, who
was this incredibly hard working company man who understood his business.
But you know something that just resonated my entire life
was my dad. I would go into these newspapers that
(21:05):
had been clients and my dad for years, and you
know what, they would pull me aside his customers and
they would say, you know, I've known your dad for
fifteen years, and I just want you to know he's
the most sincere want to help guy I've ever met.
And he doesn't cuss, he doesn't drink, and I love him.
(21:27):
And when your customers are saying that to your kid
in private, like you know, you're living a life that
you can be proud of, you know. And so that's
what I always wanted, was was for customers to feel
that way about us in our businesses.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Yeah, I think that's that's in South Carolina would call
that a stand up guy all the time. If you
know you're doing business with a great person. If somebody
calls him a stand up.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Guy, my dad's a stand up guy, that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
So is there anything that you were reading watching that
that kind of impacts decision making? Leadership.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
My number one thing is to go to the future
in the present. That's what I'm currently working on. And
the idea is pretty simple. It's taking off of the
guys from y Combinator, who's sort of birth this idea
of living the future and look left and right and
(22:21):
see what's missing and build a business around that. And
I completely agree with that and have sort of adopted
that in my life. I try to listen to music
that's been written in the last four years. That's a
rule I have. I drive at Tesla, I have full
self driving. I just got twelve point five for the
geeks out there, and my car drives itself. I use
(22:46):
door Dash and Instacart and and all the things in
an attempt sincerely in these AI Voice agents or another
place where I just want to be doing things that
ninety seven percent of the population aren't doing yet. Now
they're going to be doing them. I am certain that,
(23:07):
you know, if three percent of America are having their
car drive them places right now, the ninety seven percent
will get there within five years. So within five years,
you know, I think everyone in America will be having
a car drive them somewhere, either through a way mow
type deal or their car they own, and that to
(23:28):
me means that that's a prediction that I feel very
certain of for five years from now. Maybe it could
take ten. You could argue with me that it could
take ten to get to that, And what I would
say to you that if if you even say that
it'll take ten, well, then that means I'm living ten
years in the future. Right now. I think I'm living
five years in the future. But you want to argue
(23:49):
with me and tell me that I'm living ten, sure,
But the reality is I want to go to the
future in the present and I want to live there
and I want to feel all that space, and then
I want to show other people what the future looks
like and help help shape that because that's what I'm
that's what I'm reading, that's what I'm I'm focused on.
(24:11):
I mean, if you you pull up my YouTube today,
you're going to see a lot of videos about uh
AI and implementing it in business and understanding software uh
tricks around AI. And I don't expect all my customers
to go read all that stuff, right I need to
read it because I'm the one living in the future
of AI. But I need to bring that future to them.
(24:32):
And so that's what I sell other entrepreneurs on as
I'm speaking right now, is if you're an accountant, you
can you can go to the future in the present,
which is be on the bleeding edge of understanding the
laws that are coming down the books, be on the
bleeding edge of the software in accounting. Do the things
that allow you to be ahead of every other you know,
(24:56):
accountant in that space, and you are going to in
almost definition. The story that I love is that Bill
Gates saw chat GPT a year and a half before
anyone else, I mean anyone else. He saw it. He
was within a group of you know, twenty five people
that knew it existed in the world for a year
(25:18):
and a half. Now, I'm not the world's best businessman,
but i can tell you I'll gladly pay a dollar
for next week's Wall Street Journal, Like no brainer, right.
So if you can, if you can be in the
future and know that chat GPT's coming out a year
and a half from now, and use that to go
(25:38):
build your business, put those tools in place, help your
friends and colleagues understand what's coming down the pipe, and
you are almost always going to win and so for me,
that's that's my current current passion. I mean, I know
there's a lot of people out that are that are
just like, man, I just want to really start a business,
and I need to make money, and I need to
(26:00):
get away from maybe a job I don't love or whatever.
And sometimes I end up saying these things that are like,
you know, live in the future, and they're like, man,
I just need to start a business, and and I
believe in that and block and tackle I think is
is you have to do it. But I also, you know,
just passionately believe that as we continue to get to
(26:21):
this place in business, we can we can live in
the future, create products that that are futuristic, and in
doing so really help other businesses grow and succeed.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
I think that's some of the most interesting advice I've
ever heard. Thanks you look into the future now and
look left and right. Yeah, I think that's pretty powerful quote.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Yeah, yeah, I mean those guys are are brilliant. There's
you can you can google it. That's that particular quote
is Paul Graham. No, I wish Pau Graham's done some
amazing things and and he's one of the founders of
why Combinator. Look that up and they have a whole
school around entrepreneurship. I've expounded on the idea a lot
(27:06):
and and in the speech that I give on it,
it you know, there's a lot more, a lot more
nuggets in there, but that was the original, That was
the original impetus and and I believe it, you know,
in a in a big, big way, is just looking
at looking at what's coming down the pipe and helping.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
You know.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
There's another great quote which is the best way to
predict the future is to invent it. And and I
think that that that really is is what we need
to be focused on, especially as it pertains to AI,
because while there are some negative capabilities that and some
concerns around AI and what will deploy will be there
(27:47):
and we'll be the one shaping it. And we, you know,
we need to we need to do need to put
our rails in place and use it ethically in all
the things.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Well, we can do this for an hour, and I
think there's a lot of people that will want to
hear more. What's your YouTube handle?
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Uh? Well, so I don't put a lot up on YouTube.
Most of my stuff is on Instagram and Facebook, but
on Instagram. I'm b Patrick Bryant. The same thing on Facebook,
Patrick Bryant. I put a lot up on LinkedIn too,
so I'm Patrick Bryant at LinkedIn, so those are LinkedIn
is probably the best place to hit me up if
(28:20):
somebody's looking to contact me.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Awesome. Well, I know if you're listening today and you
have any kind of dreams under everybody's thought of something eventually,
but just hearing about AI and some of the ways
that you look at business and getting ahead of trends,
I think that there's been something for everyone here today.
Thank you, Patrick, really really appreciate you joining iHeartMedia. Charleston
CEOs you should know, love it. Thank you so much
for having me. You've been listening to iHeart Radios.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
CEOs you should know, heard every Tuesday and Saturday morning
right here on this iHeart Radio station.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Intentionally Disturbing
Join me on this podcast as I navigate the murky waters of human behavior, current events, and personal anecdotes through in-depth interviews with incredible people—all served with a generous helping of sarcasm and satire. After years as a forensic and clinical psychologist, I offer a unique interview style and a low tolerance for bullshit, quickly steering conversations toward depth and darkness. I honor the seriousness while also appreciating wit. I’m your guide through the twisted labyrinth of the human psyche, armed with dark humor and biting wit.