May 21, 2025 • 34 mins
What does it truly mean to be human in an age of artificial intelligence? David DeWolf, founder of KnownWell, offers a refreshingly nuanced perspective on how AI should enhance our humanity rather than diminish it.
Having built and sold a 2,500-person digital products company before founding KnownWell in 2023, DeWolf observed a critical gap in how businesses were approaching AI. While many focused solely on advancing the technology or boosting personal productivity, few were addressing how AI would transform business leadership, organizational structure, and human relationships.
DeWolf's solution tackles what he calls the "professional services paradox" – the phenomenon where the very human elements that drive growth (relationships and specialized knowledge) traditionally undermine scalability. By analyzing natural information flows between service providers and clients, KnownWell creates objective relationship health metrics for businesses that previously relied on subjective assessments. The results are remarkable: companies using the platform see a 50-60% reduction in at-risk clients within six months.
Beyond the technological innovation, DeWolf shares profound insights about purpose-driven leadership, challenging the conventional notion of work-life balance. "I am a single human being," he explains, advocating for integration rather than separation between professional and personal identities. For aspiring entrepreneurs, he emphasizes the importance of "humble confidence" – the seemingly contradictory combination of unwavering determination and genuine openness to learning that characterizes successful founders.
Whether you're a business leader navigating the AI revolution, an educator wondering how to prepare students for this new landscape, or an entrepreneur seeking to build something meaningful, DeWolf's conversation offers valuable wisdom about maintaining our essential humanity while embracing technological advancement.
This podcast is proudly sponsored by USC Annenberg’s Master of Science in Digital Media Management (MSDMM) program. An online master’s designed to prepare practitioners to understand the evolving media landscape, make data-driven and ethical decisions, and build a more equitable future by leading diverse teams with the technical, artistic, analytical, and production skills needed to create engaging content and technologies for the global marketplace. Learn more or apply today at https://dmm.usc.edu.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Mediascape insights from digital
changemakers, a speaker seriesand podcast brought to you by
USC Annenberg's Digital MediaManagement Program.
Join us as we unlock thesecrets to success in an
increasingly digital world.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I am thrilled to welcome to Mediascape David
DeWolf of KnownWell.
That name, knownwell is reallyintriguing to me, david, so I'm
really excited to dive inbecause you do many things.
Just looking at your LinkedInlike you have family ventures,
you're a board member, you hostAI know-how you have known well,
and on and on and on.
(00:49):
So I'd love to hear how you gothere and have you been working
in the AI space before the restof us started talking about it?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Yeah, man so many questions are so packed.
You know, I'm so glad KnownWellstrikes you the way it does.
I'll just start with that,because it is definitely a
passion of mine.
I've been in technology foreverso, yes, you know, was my last
company that I built and grew toabout 2,500 employees.
We were focused on buildingdigital products for media,
(01:21):
information and technologycompanies and in that world,
yeah, we had been using AI forgosh over a decade.
You know, people forget what'snew about AI is the
democratization of it, not thetechnology itself.
Right, the basic technologyneural networks have been around
for a while, but my passion isactually not the technology for
its own sake.
(01:42):
My passion is actually how dowe apply technology in business
and specifically the human partof that?
I think so often we forget thatthe humanities are important in
technology.
We focus on the STEM subjects,right, and I think, especially
with AI, there's been thisawakening of what does this mean
(02:05):
?
And what I found as I wasstarting KnownWell was that
there were a lot ofconversations about the
technology and just theadvancement of the LM.
There were a lot ofconversations about personal
productivity and how we put itto use.
Those are interesting to me,but where I was really
passionate was about how is itgoing to impact us in the
(02:27):
business world?
How are we going to leaddifferently?
How are we going to run ourorganizations differently?
What is it going to do to jobs?
All of those things.
And when you look at the bottomof all of those questions, I
felt like it was really, reallyimportant to begin to
distinguish what makes a machinedifferent from a human being,
(02:47):
what's truly human, and that'sthat humanities.
Part of AI that I think is soimportant and so known well,
comes from exactly that.
What is unique about a human.
You and I can sit here and getto know each other and we will
really.
You will know me and I willknow you, and there's a deep
understanding, there's aconsciousness there.
Machines don't do that right,and I think that ability to have
(03:11):
relationship is so important.
And as we look to deploy AI, aishould be used to promote our
humanity, to elevate ourhumanity, to allow us to do
things that are more human anddo for us what actually does the
opposite, which is make us moremechanical, right, and so
(03:31):
that's my passion and that'swhere the name comes from.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
You are saying something that I often say to my
students.
I talk about how artificialintelligence gives us the chance
to actually spend more timebeing human.
Then we ask what does it meanto be human?
It doesn't mean paying thebills, doing menial tasks.
It means being present for ourloved ones, for our community,
(03:55):
for our work, being able toiterate and ideate and come up
with new and innovative ideasand I'm really excited about
that of ideas, and I'm reallyexcited about that.
I see that people are still ina lot of places scared of
technology and we're seeing alot more bottom up People are
starting to use it and thensaying, hey, we really need to
put some of these processes intoplace to their CEOs and their
(04:17):
C-suite, but also at the studentlevel.
I have students who said wecouldn't use AI tools at all in
undergrad, students who said wecouldn't use AI tools at all in
undergrad, and now you'retelling us we have to because
I'm saying my classes are AIfirst.
There's no digital mediamanagement, no ad tech, mar tech
without artificial intelligence, whether you know it or not.
So let's get your hands dirtyand test these tools Totally.
(04:38):
Now I'm hearing from employersthat they're not hiring people
who don't have some skill set inAI.
It doesn't have to be expertlevel right, but it has to have
some.
So the fact that you're reallypinpointing the fact that we're
supposed to use this technologyto have more humanity is amazing
(05:00):
.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Yeah, yeah, and I love what you said there.
You know there's so manyaspects.
I do think the naturalinclination for human beings is
to be scared of change and fear,especially of technology when
there's a big revolution.
Now, don't get me wrong,there's plenty of things we can
have a whole conversation about.
Some of my fears are like, theway we use it is really
(05:21):
important.
Right, the technology itself isamoral, but the way we apply it
can undermine us or it canelevate us.
But I think it's reallyimportant, especially when
you're talking about education.
Right, I'm very close to mykid's high school principal.
I've had this conversation.
Same thing it's banned from theschool.
It's the exact opposite of whatI would do.
Right, I'm on the board of auniversity.
(05:43):
Exact same thing.
It's the exact opposite of whatI would do.
We need to be teaching theyoung up and comers.
How do you leverage this in agood, positive way?
How do you look at the resultsand discern, like, do I need to
question this?
Might this be hallucinating?
Might this be biased, all ofthose types of things?
(06:03):
There's a new skill set and wehave to really help build those
muscles.
And if we say, don't touch it,it's scary, we're going to do
the opposite and we're going toend up with the exact opposite
result from what we're hopingfor.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah, especially when we see other countries really
embracing I mean China nowteaching it in K-12.
I do work for a nonprofitfoundation that has an online
school and I was just talking tothe curriculum director about
how we're going to incorporateAI into the curriculum, but also
into the leadership course, andhere's how you use different
tools for research, and thoseskills are so important.
(06:41):
They're just the next phaseCritical.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Yeah, that's right, and they can actually enhance
our learning, right?
We think a lot about oh, peoplewon't know how to write anymore
those types of things.
You know what it reminds me of?
It reminds me of when I was inhigh school and the TI-81, I
think it was first came out theadvanced calculator right, and
it was banned from school andyou'd be expelled.
My kids now it's on theirrequired purchase list.
(07:04):
We haven't gotten stupider as asociety, right?
We're not dumb because we havethese calculators right.
In fact, they've allowed us todo more, and I think AI is very
much the exact same thing.
It can empower us to take thenext step and have even more
breakthroughs.
There will still be deepexperts in subject areas that
(07:25):
know the math, the language, thewhatever even deeper than we do
today.
The language, the whatever evendeeper than we do today, just
because we can automate some ofit for those of us that are
normal and don't want to docalculus every single minute of
our lives right doesn't meanthat there won't be experts.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Yeah, 100%.
And that goes to the argumentabout oh well, will teachers be
taking over?
And I say no, there'sinformation certainly that.
Say no, there's informationcertainly that we could have an
AI avatar.
Talk about the facts andfigures of the topic, but to
really get the recent casestudies, talk about what we as
humans are doing in the field ofour expertise in our industries
(08:03):
.
That's not going to be replaced.
You can't just take ourindividual knowledge bases.
Now you can use tools likeDelphi and put your knowledge
base into something and have aclone.
That's helpful for some stuff,but it's not going to take over
the whole landscape.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
Absolutely.
I love that example and I thinkwe can actually do this exact
same thing with whatever job itis we're talking about.
Will there be some that aredisrupted, of course, but take
the teaching profession.
Ask yourself what is uniquelyhuman about this job.
Wouldn't you love to be able todo more of that?
Right?
Grading papers, I'm guessing,is not the favorite of any
(08:36):
teacher, but connecting withstudents and actually
understanding them and theirnuances and helping them to
learn and have that light bulbmoment I don't think technology
can do that nearly as well as ahuman being.
So let's let teachers do that,not just grade papers.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yeah, exactly.
So let's talk about becauseKnownWell has been around since
2023, what made you switch right?
Do you still have your othercompany?
Are you fully focused?
Speaker 3 (09:07):
So, 16 years growing a professional services firm,
sold that company twice toprivate equity, had a blast,
incredible run.
And, to be really honest withyou, 2023 was coming around and
on January 1st, I stepped downbecause my two oldest kids were
getting married and I wanted tobe mentally present for their
(09:27):
weddings and it's hard to run abusiness and be mentally present
, to be mentally present fortheir weddings.
And it's hard to run a businessand be mentally present.
And after 16 years of runninghard and 16 years of consecutive
growth, it was just time tostep down, and so I did.
I retired for nine months andwhat was really unique about
that time is, yes, I got tospend time with my family and
friends and refresh and rechargeall of those great things.
(09:48):
But I couldn't have timed itbetter because, if you remember,
january 1st was just six weeksafter the release of ChatGPT,
yeah, and I was able to watch AIcascade through our society on
the sidelines with literallynothing to do, and when you're
running a business, you haveblinders on.
You interpret everythingthrough the eyes of your
(10:09):
business, and I was able to stepback and not have those
blinders on and just watch whatwas happening and I saw these
dynamics that we're talkingabout.
Right, I saw the advancement ofthe technology.
I saw individuals starting touse it, but what I saw was a lot
of organizations that werescared, that were saying this is
(10:30):
either going to make me orbreak me.
This is my opportunity toeither win or really lose.
But they were stuck.
They had no idea where to go,what to do, what the future was
going to look like, and so Ijust started talking to
customers.
I really believe, as anentrepreneur, you do two things.
Number one you talk to tons ofcustomers.
Number two you follow the moneyright.
(10:52):
Those are the two things that Idid.
So I started talking toinvestors what are they seeing?
And I started talking toexecutives and, over and over
again, I started to see certainpatterns.
One of the patterns that I sawwas this pattern of everybody
knew they had to move, they weremotivated to move, they were
ready to move, but they had noidea what to do, so they weren't
(11:13):
moving.
The second one that I saw waseverybody was talking about AI
and talking about their data,and they said you know, one of
the problems we have is we'reoverwhelmed with data.
We have way too much.
In fact, there's an Oraclestudy from about a year ago that
says that 93% I think it is ofleaders claim that they have so
(11:33):
much data that it's underminingtheir decisions, it's making it
worse.
Yet at the same time, 91% willtell you they don't have the
quote intelligence that theyneed to make good decisions
right, so it's just informationoverload.
So that was a trend.
And then, finally, I saw thisother one that kept on coming up
but seemed unrelated until Ihad an aha moment, and that was
(11:56):
we kept on hearing companiestalk about surprise churn of
their customers, and I couldn'tconnect the dots there and
figure out what it was.
Here's what it turned out to beMore and more companies today
are turning out to be like theprofessional services
organization that I ran, whichis they're relationship driven,
they're not transactional, andin a relationship business
(12:20):
without transactions, there isno ability to do customer
analytics and actually know anddeeply understand the very
nature of your commercialrelationship, and without that
you can't create a disciplined,predictable operating machine.
And, coming from this world ofprofessional services, I knew
(12:42):
this in spades, right.
In professional services, welive in what I call the
professional services paradox.
Call the professional servicesparadox, which is every single
day, you wake up and what getsyou to grow and to be a
successful professional servicescompany is the exact same thing
that undermines your ability toscale right.
It is human knowledge, it isrelationship.
(13:04):
It's these things that aren'tscalable.
Well, guess what?
With AI, they're scalable in anew way, and the reason why is
we don't need transactional dataanymore to understand the world
around us.
Transactional data was createdas a reflection of reality that
machines can understand.
What we have naturally is whatyou and I are doing right now.
(13:26):
We're conversing thisconversation is a natural
information flow.
It is a natural representationof what's going on and guess
what Machines can now understand.
That so known well is helping topromote human relationships and
build stronger service providerclient relationships by
understanding the naturalinformation flows that already
(13:50):
flow between a service providerand their client.
That's what we're using AI todo, and the great part about it
is we've seen tremendous results.
We see that once deploying andoperationalizing our platform,
within six months, our customerssee a reduction between 50 and
60% of their at risk clients.
(14:10):
They see an increase in theirhealthy clients, like extremely
kind of top end delightedcustomers between 50 and 90
percent, all because now theyhave this understanding of the
relationship.
They have metrics that they'venever had before, that
understand what used to besubjective measurements are now
truly objective measures ofhealth that they can go act on
(14:32):
and execute on.
That's the power of AI it'sdoing what machines can do,
enabling these great businessesto go do what only they can do,
and the humans are going out andmaking it happen Amazing.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
On a smaller scale.
We talked about this in myclass yesterday, because we
talked about MarTech and howevery company needs to really
understand their customer baseinside and out, and
personalization, and how genericpersonalization of, okay,
somebody's birthday is inDecember, you send them a coupon
for traveling in December.
Well, that's probably not goingto work right, but if you know
(15:07):
that they travel to these cities, if you're an airline and
they've traveled several hundredthousand miles on your airline,
then you can come up with adifferent message, and that's
something that we're reallymissing the boat on.
And this is where, to yourpoint, exactly what you're doing
it's not.
Although you're using it forenterprise systems and larger
organizations, there's also aneed for smaller companies to be
(15:32):
as nimble.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Yeah, and I think one of the points the example you
just point out is great.
I think because there's twosides to the AI equation and I
think, because of generative AI,a lot of people focus on the
creation of content, right,right, and a lot of
organizations, big and small,still think about AI and they
have this big pit in theirstomach but I have to get my
(15:54):
data ready.
Well, there's input and there'soutput.
The great thing about AI is,yes, it can create content.
It can also quote, understandthat content, it can make sense
of natural pros, and I thinkthat can be super helpful,
especially when you talk aboutthose small organizations.
You don't have a team of dataengineers, right?
You don't have an IT departmentthat can help you with these,
(16:17):
but with AI today, you don'tneed it.
You don't have to have cleandata.
We don't need data warehousesin the same way that we used to.
My big provocative battle crythese days is I think data is
dead right.
There's still a lot of peopletalking about it.
Battle cry these days is Ithink data is dead right,
there's still a lot of peopletalking about it, but I think
the reality is conversation andour natural flows of information
are overtaking it really reallyquickly, and that's an
(16:39):
advantage to these smallbusinesses that you're talking
about.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Yeah, and you also mentioned democratization, right
.
Artificial intelligence,machine learning, have been
running lots of things for along time.
Yeah, financial systems,recommendations for what movies
we watch Totally Big and smalluse cases.
And one thing I think is thatthis democratization that you
talked about is also theadvantage of more people can
(17:03):
start businesses with lessbarrier to entry, less people
needed in their companies tostart, and then they can scale
up appropriately for long-termsuccess.
I've been on both sides.
I've had organizations where,all of a sudden, I got an influx
of clients.
I hired, hired, hired.
Didn't think about some of therepercussions of that.
If I had had these tools backthen I could have said, okay,
(17:26):
let's be a little smarter aboutthis, I don't need to hire five
people because I can have my AItools do this part of the work
right, and then I'm the one whois interfacing with the clients,
doing these other levers andtriggers, and then I can staff
appropriately, totally.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Yeah, I think that's so true, and many, many types of
businesses in the past havescaled with people right.
In my world, in professionalservices, it's of businesses in
the past have scaled with peopleRight, and in my world in
professional services, is theworst of the worst, right, and
what happens in those worlds isthere's so many aspects of what
you said that actually get inthe way of healthy culture.
Right, the friction that'sinserted just by adding middle
(18:06):
management takes us away.
It actually takes us away fromwhat truly makes us human.
It's why people become lessfulfilled typically as they get
stuck in a big enterprise.
Right, we hear it all the time.
We hear about the bureaucracy.
People complain, right, there'ssome stability, there's some
things we like about largeenterprises, but there's a lot
that people crave in smallbusinesses and medium business
(18:28):
where they can have a strongerculture, where they can feel
like they're in a team, allthose types of things.
I really believe that we are atthe advent of a new season of
business where the middle marketis coming back and I think
that's really really exciting,not just for the economy, but I
think it's really exciting forpeople.
It's for our fulfillment atwork, for our place as human
(18:52):
beings.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Absolutely so.
I wanted to ask about startinga podcast.
Okay, Right, Because youstarted the organization A few
months later you started thepodcast, Obviously for both of
them.
You saw a need, you saw a holein the information people were
getting and the kinds ofservices that were being
provided.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Totally, talia.
This was a very deliberatedecision.
When I started to really thinkabout KnownWell and I observed
this hole in the market wetalked about right, like, how is
AI going to be applied tobusiness, and I saw nobody
talking about it I made adecision.
One of my two co-founders thatI brought in to support me is my
(19:33):
chief marketing officer,courtney.
She's awesome and she'sactually done a lot of
podcasting in the past, and whatI decided was there was a blue
ocean, there was an opportunity,there was a void in the market,
and that one of the best thingsthat you can do at a point like
this, at these inflectionpoints that they happen maybe
two or three times in a lifetime, if you're lucky right is you
(19:55):
can actually stake a claim.
And so we decided to plant aflag.
We actually formally launchedthe company on September 5th I
think it was of 2023.
It was that exact same week.
We published our very firstpodcast episode.
We've been doing it every weeksince for this reason.
Now here's the fun part.
Let's talk about the results,not the reason why, within two
(20:16):
and a half months, we had notonly found the product that we
thought we'd build, because wefound some real pain.
We actually landed our firstcustomer without having a single
line of code written or anengineer on staff Wow, and they
were an inbound lead that foundus through our thought
leadership and the podcast.
(20:37):
Amazing, that's the power ofmedia these days.
Right, fast forward about gosh.
It was probably six or sevenmonths ago.
We started to see a new trendin our lead flow.
Like what is this?
We started getting on the phoneand talking to new prospects
that were inbound.
We had no connection towhatsoever.
(20:58):
We're asking where'd you findthem?
And we started to hear a theme.
Openai told me to reach out toyou.
It was like what?
Well, we have seen.
Probably in January, we sawjust this really take off, where
we had now put out enoughcontent that you know.
If you go ask about not evencommercial intelligence but how
(21:18):
do I score my client healthright, derivatives of that and
you talk about being arelationship business, open AI,
chatgpt will point you directlyto Nunwell.
Those are the types of resultswe're seeing just from being in
the digital content space andprioritizing our thought
leadership.
Funny enough, it's also helpedus internally.
It helps you perfect ideasright, and so our product has
(21:41):
come a long way.
I just I'm a huge fan of it.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Yeah, I was just at AI Mavericks a couple months ago
and it was all CEOs andfounders and AI companies and
talking about exactly whatyou're saying.
Now we're seeing podcast SEO.
So people are searching for hey, I want to know about this.
It's leading them to podcasts.
If you go into chat or Brock orClaude or Perplexity or all of
(22:07):
the different systems, copilot,right, all the different ones
that I'm not mentioning as welland you type in a prompt and you
want to ask about something,your companies are starting to
come up.
Search is moving.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Yeah.
So that's fantastic and I lovehearing this because this is
what I preach about podcastingbut often, you know, people say,
okay, that's nice, and I talkabout my experience and all the
opportunities it's brought me,but you're using a real example
of a business case where you'regetting so much inbound traffic
from that.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Yeah, I mean to give your listeners a comparison.
You know 16 years of buildingthree pillar right.
Multiple hundreds of millionsof dollars in revenue per year.
Like we scaled the business andI have better lead flow now in
known well, a year and a halfold, with 22 employees, than I
did at 3Pillar with 2,500employees, a real marketing
(22:59):
budget and 16 years ofperformance right.
That's the difference.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
What does it mean to you to be a purpose-driven
leader?
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Because I know that is something that's really
important to you, yeah, so to me, it means living what I believe
, right?
I think so often we talk.
One of my pet peeves in thebusiness world is we talk a lot
about work-life balance, andthat term drives me nuts.
Not because I don't love myfamily I've got eight kids and a
beautiful wife of 25 years.
I love my family, right, I lovemy life.
(23:30):
There's lots of things I loveabout it.
What drives me crazy is that thephrase pits your work against
your life.
Right, and I am a single humanbeing.
I am right now sitting here.
I am a father, and you betterbelieve that if I get an SOS
message that my daughter or myson is in the hospital, I'm
going to walk out and go RightAt the same time when I'm
(23:51):
putting my kids down to bed atnight.
I'm still a CEO.
And if I get a text messagethat one of my employees is in
the hospital or fire is goingoff, you better believe that I'm
also going to leave at thatpoint in time.
And this world we've created,where one has to be against the
other versus working in synergy,drives me nuts, right, and so
(24:13):
for me, my purpose is I reallybelieve that business should
elevate the humanity of people,and I've found a business where
I can live that purpose, notjust in how I run my business,
which is what I was able to dolast time.
I was able to build a culturethat promoted that.
That's still important, but Iwant to be able to actually
(24:36):
build and to elevate humanity.
Allow people to be better wives, husbands, mothers, fathers,
friends, skateboarders whateveryou want to be right At the same
time of thriving in your work,and I do believe that both are
very possible, and I've beenvery blessed to be able to live
a life where both have beenpossible for me, and so I want
(24:56):
to pass that along, and I thinkthe world's a better place when
that happens, and so I want tomake sure that I wake up every
single day.
Being a purpose-driven leadermeans that is why I show up,
that is why I build the business, it's why I make the hard
decisions in the business.
It's not for other alternativereasons.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Yeah, we are, in some ways, so the same person.
Everything you're saying I'mlike yes, yes, yes.
All of that are true to who Iam as well.
So, piggybacking on that, whatdoes it take to be a good
startup founder?
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Hmm, man.
So this is a hard questionbecause there's so much there,
but I boil it down to one simplephrase and I call it humble
confidence.
I think the successfulentrepreneur what I have seen
has to be so stubborn that theywill not give up on their vision
(25:53):
, but has to be so humble thatthey can learn along the way how
to evolve that and how tonavigate the path to get there,
because it's never a straightline and those two things on the
surface seem incredibly inconflict.
Rarely do you find someone withextreme confidence, that won't
(26:16):
give up, that is stubborn I'mgoing to will this to happen and
an incredible humility to say Idon't know what I don't know
and I want to learn from otherpeople, and I don't have to be
the right person in the room andI don't have to be the smartest
person in the room, and I thinkthat combination is at the
heart of every successfulentrepreneur.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
And I feel like not everybody has that focus and
that centeredness in theirventures but, this is what the
future should look like.
I hope so, yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
I hope so.
You know there's a lot ofentrepreneurs that you know, two
broad brush flavors.
There are those that startbusinesses because they have a
passion for what they're doingand sometimes that's the work
itself, the industry itself, theproblem they're solving.
Sometimes it's their purpose,right?
You have other entrepreneurswho do it for the money, they do
it for the success, they do itfor the recognition.
In my experience, the odds ofsuccess are so in favor of those
(27:19):
that do it for a differentreason.
It's not power and it's notmoney.
When the entrepreneurs go outand they start something for
those selfish means nine timesout of 10, just from anecdotes
of the people I've seen, thefriends I've had, the rooms I've
been in they tend to fail.
They could be successful fortwo or three years, maybe five
years.
They're not enduring companies.
(27:39):
They could be successful fortwo or three years, maybe five
years.
They're not enduring companies.
They don't build greatbusinesses.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Let's take it back a little further.
I teach for two master'sprograms the master's in digital
media management and thedigital social media.
I've also taught the master'sin PR and advertising branding.
You were a media major, I was,yeah.
So, this goes hand in handbecause our students right now
(28:05):
are in that convergence of mediaand technology.
So what was your path fromstraight media into?
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Yeah, my path was really pragmatic.
I graduated from school and myvery first job offer was from a
radio station in Buffalo, newYork, paying me $17,000 a year.
And my now wife, who was myfiance at the time, said oh, I'm
not going to Buffalo, new York,and you can't support a family
on that.
So I ended up in Dallas, texas,and so my first real job not my
(28:38):
job offer was actually workingfor an ad agency and I had.
This was right at the height ofthe dot com.
This was 1999.
I had learned over the years.
I had one class in school andjust had a passion for I knew
how to write HTML and so this adagency hired me to do quote new
media.
I was building websites and myvery first client at that ad
(29:03):
agency and I was a temp worker.
It was only there three months,but my very first client for
him was a software company andwe were building a website for a
software company and I ended upgoing consulting with that
client and, turns out, the CTOof that organization happened to
really like me and offered me ajob and I ended up going into
(29:24):
user experience design for theCTO and then quickly became a
front-end engineer and thenwithin a year became an engineer
on the CTO's team Fun part.
He is now my chief scientist atKnownWell.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Oh my gosh, careful.
I love that.
What advice would you give tostudents of today who are
looking at you know, obviouslywe talked about a few things
before we jumped on that really,everybody needs to know how to
use AI tools.
I'm hearing I mean, we've beentalking about this a few months
ago.
(29:57):
The narrative was you won't befired from your role if you
don't know AI, but if you don'tknow AI and now I'm having CEOs
literally tell me yeah, we'renot hiring people because if
they don't have a baselineknowledge, they can't operate in
our business structure.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
I actually think this dilemma goes back to something
that is kind of a deeper, deeperproblem within our society.
You know, I think that we havegotten into this mode for a long
time.
Everybody just had to go off tocollege because it's the thing
that you do and there was reallyno discernment of what was I
made for, what are my gifts,what are my talents, what are my
passions no-transcript reminderof is get back to the heart of
(31:04):
what you love and what you'regreat at and find that
intersection.
Now you have to intersect itwith something where you can
make a living at as well.
It's really important.
But I think, instead of justpicking a profession or just
making your parents happy orjust doing something because it
is the most prestigious thing oryou'll make the most money it's
kind of like the entrepreneurconversation we had those that
(31:25):
go do it for the money, theprestige, aren't the most
successful, they're definitelynot the most fulfilled, right.
But if you can find thatpurpose, if you can find that
reason that you are uniquelyqualified to do, I think you
will thrive.
And you will thrive even in aworld where AI is coming for
(31:45):
everything and you will.
What we're seeing in real timeleveraging it.
We're an AI company, but westill have humans.
We're using the AI.
We are seeing that it's thosethat have deep expertise and a
passion and a love for what theydo.
They treat their job as a craft.
They actually get the biggestand best benefit from the AI.
(32:07):
It takes them those are alreadyoperating 3x 10x greater than
their peers.
It takes them to 20x, 40x, andI think that's who you want to
be.
You want to hone in to what'suniquely you.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
Yeah, yeah, fantastic .
Well, you're preaching to thechoir here.
I've loved our conversation.
I want to understand a littlebit more about.
I understand that you'reonboarding professional services
companies into a beta.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
We are, yeah.
So this platform we've talkedabout it's live, it's deployed
in customers and it is having atremendous impact.
We're seeing reduced churn,increased growth all coming from
de-risking your client base,because you know them and you
can execute on it, and so we'reproviding metrics and insights
and we actually giverecommendations.
(32:55):
Here's what you should do.
Our platform surfaces up verypersonalized recommendations.
This is what you should do tostrengthen this client
relationship.
The results of that are throughthe roof.
It's going really well, and sowe've just actually opened up a
few brand new spots in our betaprogram.
And if you are running a middlemarket professional services
organization, if you have atleast 25, 30 clients, you're
(33:20):
probably encountering theprofessional services paradox,
and we can help solve that, andwe would love to work with
innovative companies that wantto help us shape the direction
of this product and really useit early on.
So go to knownwellcom and checkit out and we'd love to talk to
you.
Fantastic.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Well, this is going to be mandatory listen or watch
for my students.
This is exactly what we'retalking about right now the
changing ecosystem.
What people really need torealize that we are going to be
more human in this age of AI andagentic AI and Web4 and all the
things that are coming at usfaster than we realize.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
Totally.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
And you're hitting the spot so well on really
understanding your customer,understanding how to keep your
existing customer informant,even deeper relationship with
them.
So thank you, David DeWolf, forbringing your expertise to
Mediascape today.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
It was so much fun.
I really enjoyed theconversation.
Thanks for having me, Annika.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Likewise, and we'll have your website in the show
notes and thank you to everybodywho's watching this episode or
listening to it on your favoriteplatform.
I am Annika Jackson, one of thehosts of Mediascape Insights
from Digital Changemakers, runby USC's MS in Digital Media
Management Program.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
To learn more about the Master of Science in Digital
Media Management Program, visitus on the web at dmmuscedu.
Welcome to Mediascape insights from digital
changemakers, a speaker seriesand podcast brought to you by
USC Annenberg's Digital MediaManagement Program.
Join us as we unlock thesecrets to success in an
increasingly digital world.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I am thrilled to welcome to Mediascape David
DeWolf of KnownWell.
That name, knownwell is reallyintriguing to me, david, so I'm
really excited to dive inbecause you do many things.
Just looking at your LinkedInlike you have family ventures,
you're a board member, you hostAI know-how you have known well,
and on and on and on.
(00:49):
So I'd love to hear how you gothere and have you been working
in the AI space before the restof us started talking about it?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Yeah, man so many questions are so packed.
You know, I'm so glad KnownWellstrikes you the way it does.
I'll just start with that,because it is definitely a
passion of mine.
I've been in technology foreverso, yes, you know, was my last
company that I built and grew toabout 2,500 employees.
We were focused on buildingdigital products for media,
(01:21):
information and technologycompanies and in that world,
yeah, we had been using AI forgosh over a decade.
You know, people forget what'snew about AI is the
democratization of it, not thetechnology itself.
Right, the basic technologyneural networks have been around
for a while, but my passion isactually not the technology for
its own sake.
(01:42):
My passion is actually how dowe apply technology in business
and specifically the human partof that?
I think so often we forget thatthe humanities are important in
technology.
We focus on the STEM subjects,right, and I think, especially
with AI, there's been thisawakening of what does this mean
(02:05):
?
And what I found as I wasstarting KnownWell was that
there were a lot ofconversations about the
technology and just theadvancement of the LM.
There were a lot ofconversations about personal
productivity and how we put itto use.
Those are interesting to me,but where I was really
passionate was about how is itgoing to impact us in the
(02:27):
business world?
How are we going to leaddifferently?
How are we going to run ourorganizations differently?
What is it going to do to jobs?
All of those things.
And when you look at the bottomof all of those questions, I
felt like it was really, reallyimportant to begin to
distinguish what makes a machinedifferent from a human being,
(02:47):
what's truly human, and that'sthat humanities.
Part of AI that I think is soimportant and so known well,
comes from exactly that.
What is unique about a human.
You and I can sit here and getto know each other and we will
really.
You will know me and I willknow you, and there's a deep
understanding, there's aconsciousness there.
Machines don't do that right,and I think that ability to have
(03:11):
relationship is so important.
And as we look to deploy AI, aishould be used to promote our
humanity, to elevate ourhumanity, to allow us to do
things that are more human anddo for us what actually does the
opposite, which is make us moremechanical, right, and so
(03:31):
that's my passion and that'swhere the name comes from.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
You are saying something that I often say to my
students.
I talk about how artificialintelligence gives us the chance
to actually spend more timebeing human.
Then we ask what does it meanto be human?
It doesn't mean paying thebills, doing menial tasks.
It means being present for ourloved ones, for our community,
(03:55):
for our work, being able toiterate and ideate and come up
with new and innovative ideasand I'm really excited about
that of ideas, and I'm reallyexcited about that.
I see that people are still ina lot of places scared of
technology and we're seeing alot more bottom up People are
starting to use it and thensaying, hey, we really need to
put some of these processes intoplace to their CEOs and their
(04:17):
C-suite, but also at the studentlevel.
I have students who said wecouldn't use AI tools at all in
undergrad, students who said wecouldn't use AI tools at all in
undergrad, and now you'retelling us we have to because
I'm saying my classes are AIfirst.
There's no digital mediamanagement, no ad tech, mar tech
without artificial intelligence, whether you know it or not.
So let's get your hands dirtyand test these tools Totally.
(04:38):
Now I'm hearing from employersthat they're not hiring people
who don't have some skill set inAI.
It doesn't have to be expertlevel right, but it has to have
some.
So the fact that you're reallypinpointing the fact that we're
supposed to use this technologyto have more humanity is amazing
(05:00):
.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Yeah, yeah, and I love what you said there.
You know there's so manyaspects.
I do think the naturalinclination for human beings is
to be scared of change and fear,especially of technology when
there's a big revolution.
Now, don't get me wrong,there's plenty of things we can
have a whole conversation about.
Some of my fears are like, theway we use it is really
(05:21):
important.
Right, the technology itself isamoral, but the way we apply it
can undermine us or it canelevate us.
But I think it's reallyimportant, especially when
you're talking about education.
Right, I'm very close to mykid's high school principal.
I've had this conversation.
Same thing it's banned from theschool.
It's the exact opposite of whatI would do.
Right, I'm on the board of auniversity.
(05:43):
Exact same thing.
It's the exact opposite of whatI would do.
We need to be teaching theyoung up and comers.
How do you leverage this in agood, positive way?
How do you look at the resultsand discern, like, do I need to
question this?
Might this be hallucinating?
Might this be biased, all ofthose types of things?
(06:03):
There's a new skill set and wehave to really help build those
muscles.
And if we say, don't touch it,it's scary, we're going to do
the opposite and we're going toend up with the exact opposite
result from what we're hopingfor.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah, especially when we see other countries really
embracing I mean China nowteaching it in K-12.
I do work for a nonprofitfoundation that has an online
school and I was just talking tothe curriculum director about
how we're going to incorporateAI into the curriculum, but also
into the leadership course, andhere's how you use different
tools for research, and thoseskills are so important.
(06:41):
They're just the next phaseCritical.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Yeah, that's right, and they can actually enhance
our learning, right?
We think a lot about oh, peoplewon't know how to write anymore
those types of things.
You know what it reminds me of?
It reminds me of when I was inhigh school and the TI-81, I
think it was first came out theadvanced calculator right, and
it was banned from school andyou'd be expelled.
My kids now it's on theirrequired purchase list.
(07:04):
We haven't gotten stupider as asociety, right?
We're not dumb because we havethese calculators right.
In fact, they've allowed us todo more, and I think AI is very
much the exact same thing.
It can empower us to take thenext step and have even more
breakthroughs.
There will still be deepexperts in subject areas that
(07:25):
know the math, the language, thewhatever even deeper than we do
today.
The language, the whatever evendeeper than we do today, just
because we can automate some ofit for those of us that are
normal and don't want to docalculus every single minute of
our lives right doesn't meanthat there won't be experts.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Yeah, 100%.
And that goes to the argumentabout oh well, will teachers be
taking over?
And I say no, there'sinformation certainly that.
Say no, there's informationcertainly that we could have an
AI avatar.
Talk about the facts andfigures of the topic, but to
really get the recent casestudies, talk about what we as
humans are doing in the field ofour expertise in our industries
(08:03):
.
That's not going to be replaced.
You can't just take ourindividual knowledge bases.
Now you can use tools likeDelphi and put your knowledge
base into something and have aclone.
That's helpful for some stuff,but it's not going to take over
the whole landscape.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
Absolutely.
I love that example and I thinkwe can actually do this exact
same thing with whatever job itis we're talking about.
Will there be some that aredisrupted, of course, but take
the teaching profession.
Ask yourself what is uniquelyhuman about this job.
Wouldn't you love to be able todo more of that?
Right?
Grading papers, I'm guessing,is not the favorite of any
(08:36):
teacher, but connecting withstudents and actually
understanding them and theirnuances and helping them to
learn and have that light bulbmoment I don't think technology
can do that nearly as well as ahuman being.
So let's let teachers do that,not just grade papers.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yeah, exactly.
So let's talk about becauseKnownWell has been around since
2023, what made you switch right?
Do you still have your othercompany?
Are you fully focused?
Speaker 3 (09:07):
So, 16 years growing a professional services firm,
sold that company twice toprivate equity, had a blast,
incredible run.
And, to be really honest withyou, 2023 was coming around and
on January 1st, I stepped downbecause my two oldest kids were
getting married and I wanted tobe mentally present for their
(09:27):
weddings and it's hard to run abusiness and be mentally present
, to be mentally present fortheir weddings.
And it's hard to run a businessand be mentally present.
And after 16 years of runninghard and 16 years of consecutive
growth, it was just time tostep down, and so I did.
I retired for nine months andwhat was really unique about
that time is, yes, I got tospend time with my family and
friends and refresh and rechargeall of those great things.
(09:48):
But I couldn't have timed itbetter because, if you remember,
january 1st was just six weeksafter the release of ChatGPT,
yeah, and I was able to watch AIcascade through our society on
the sidelines with literallynothing to do, and when you're
running a business, you haveblinders on.
You interpret everythingthrough the eyes of your
(10:09):
business, and I was able to stepback and not have those
blinders on and just watch whatwas happening and I saw these
dynamics that we're talkingabout.
Right, I saw the advancement ofthe technology.
I saw individuals starting touse it, but what I saw was a lot
of organizations that werescared, that were saying this is
(10:30):
either going to make me orbreak me.
This is my opportunity toeither win or really lose.
But they were stuck.
They had no idea where to go,what to do, what the future was
going to look like, and so Ijust started talking to
customers.
I really believe, as anentrepreneur, you do two things.
Number one you talk to tons ofcustomers.
Number two you follow the moneyright.
(10:52):
Those are the two things that Idid.
So I started talking toinvestors what are they seeing?
And I started talking toexecutives and, over and over
again, I started to see certainpatterns.
One of the patterns that I sawwas this pattern of everybody
knew they had to move, they weremotivated to move, they were
ready to move, but they had noidea what to do, so they weren't
(11:13):
moving.
The second one that I saw waseverybody was talking about AI
and talking about their data,and they said you know, one of
the problems we have is we'reoverwhelmed with data.
We have way too much.
In fact, there's an Oraclestudy from about a year ago that
says that 93% I think it is ofleaders claim that they have so
(11:33):
much data that it's underminingtheir decisions, it's making it
worse.
Yet at the same time, 91% willtell you they don't have the
quote intelligence that theyneed to make good decisions
right, so it's just informationoverload.
So that was a trend.
And then, finally, I saw thisother one that kept on coming up
but seemed unrelated until Ihad an aha moment, and that was
(11:56):
we kept on hearing companiestalk about surprise churn of
their customers, and I couldn'tconnect the dots there and
figure out what it was.
Here's what it turned out to beMore and more companies today
are turning out to be like theprofessional services
organization that I ran, whichis they're relationship driven,
they're not transactional, andin a relationship business
(12:20):
without transactions, there isno ability to do customer
analytics and actually know anddeeply understand the very
nature of your commercialrelationship, and without that
you can't create a disciplined,predictable operating machine.
And, coming from this world ofprofessional services, I knew
(12:42):
this in spades, right.
In professional services, welive in what I call the
professional services paradox.
Call the professional servicesparadox, which is every single
day, you wake up and what getsyou to grow and to be a
successful professional servicescompany is the exact same thing
that undermines your ability toscale right.
It is human knowledge, it isrelationship.
(13:04):
It's these things that aren'tscalable.
Well, guess what?
With AI, they're scalable in anew way, and the reason why is
we don't need transactional dataanymore to understand the world
around us.
Transactional data was createdas a reflection of reality that
machines can understand.
What we have naturally is whatyou and I are doing right now.
(13:26):
We're conversing thisconversation is a natural
information flow.
It is a natural representationof what's going on and guess
what Machines can now understand.
That so known well is helping topromote human relationships and
build stronger service providerclient relationships by
understanding the naturalinformation flows that already
(13:50):
flow between a service providerand their client.
That's what we're using AI todo, and the great part about it
is we've seen tremendous results.
We see that once deploying andoperationalizing our platform,
within six months, our customerssee a reduction between 50 and
60% of their at risk clients.
(14:10):
They see an increase in theirhealthy clients, like extremely
kind of top end delightedcustomers between 50 and 90
percent, all because now theyhave this understanding of the
relationship.
They have metrics that they'venever had before, that
understand what used to besubjective measurements are now
truly objective measures ofhealth that they can go act on
(14:32):
and execute on.
That's the power of AI it'sdoing what machines can do,
enabling these great businessesto go do what only they can do,
and the humans are going out andmaking it happen Amazing.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
On a smaller scale.
We talked about this in myclass yesterday, because we
talked about MarTech and howevery company needs to really
understand their customer baseinside and out, and
personalization, and how genericpersonalization of, okay,
somebody's birthday is inDecember, you send them a coupon
for traveling in December.
Well, that's probably not goingto work right, but if you know
(15:07):
that they travel to these cities, if you're an airline and
they've traveled several hundredthousand miles on your airline,
then you can come up with adifferent message, and that's
something that we're reallymissing the boat on.
And this is where, to yourpoint, exactly what you're doing
it's not.
Although you're using it forenterprise systems and larger
organizations, there's also aneed for smaller companies to be
(15:32):
as nimble.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Yeah, and I think one of the points the example you
just point out is great.
I think because there's twosides to the AI equation and I
think, because of generative AI,a lot of people focus on the
creation of content, right,right, and a lot of
organizations, big and small,still think about AI and they
have this big pit in theirstomach but I have to get my
(15:54):
data ready.
Well, there's input and there'soutput.
The great thing about AI is,yes, it can create content.
It can also quote, understandthat content, it can make sense
of natural pros, and I thinkthat can be super helpful,
especially when you talk aboutthose small organizations.
You don't have a team of dataengineers, right?
You don't have an IT departmentthat can help you with these,
(16:17):
but with AI today, you don'tneed it.
You don't have to have cleandata.
We don't need data warehousesin the same way that we used to.
My big provocative battle crythese days is I think data is
dead right.
There's still a lot of peopletalking about it.
Battle cry these days is Ithink data is dead right,
there's still a lot of peopletalking about it, but I think
the reality is conversation andour natural flows of information
are overtaking it really reallyquickly, and that's an
(16:39):
advantage to these smallbusinesses that you're talking
about.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Yeah, and you also mentioned democratization, right
.
Artificial intelligence,machine learning, have been
running lots of things for along time.
Yeah, financial systems,recommendations for what movies
we watch Totally Big and smalluse cases.
And one thing I think is thatthis democratization that you
talked about is also theadvantage of more people can
(17:03):
start businesses with lessbarrier to entry, less people
needed in their companies tostart, and then they can scale
up appropriately for long-termsuccess.
I've been on both sides.
I've had organizations where,all of a sudden, I got an influx
of clients.
I hired, hired, hired.
Didn't think about some of therepercussions of that.
If I had had these tools backthen I could have said, okay,
(17:26):
let's be a little smarter aboutthis, I don't need to hire five
people because I can have my AItools do this part of the work
right, and then I'm the one whois interfacing with the clients,
doing these other levers andtriggers, and then I can staff
appropriately, totally.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Yeah, I think that's so true, and many, many types of
businesses in the past havescaled with people right.
In my world, in professionalservices, it's of businesses in
the past have scaled with peopleRight, and in my world in
professional services, is theworst of the worst, right, and
what happens in those worlds isthere's so many aspects of what
you said that actually get inthe way of healthy culture.
Right, the friction that'sinserted just by adding middle
(18:06):
management takes us away.
It actually takes us away fromwhat truly makes us human.
It's why people become lessfulfilled typically as they get
stuck in a big enterprise.
Right, we hear it all the time.
We hear about the bureaucracy.
People complain, right, there'ssome stability, there's some
things we like about largeenterprises, but there's a lot
that people crave in smallbusinesses and medium business
(18:28):
where they can have a strongerculture, where they can feel
like they're in a team, allthose types of things.
I really believe that we are atthe advent of a new season of
business where the middle marketis coming back and I think
that's really really exciting,not just for the economy, but I
think it's really exciting forpeople.
It's for our fulfillment atwork, for our place as human
(18:52):
beings.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Absolutely so.
I wanted to ask about startinga podcast.
Okay, Right, Because youstarted the organization A few
months later you started thepodcast, Obviously for both of
them.
You saw a need, you saw a holein the information people were
getting and the kinds ofservices that were being
provided.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Totally, talia.
This was a very deliberatedecision.
When I started to really thinkabout KnownWell and I observed
this hole in the market wetalked about right, like, how is
AI going to be applied tobusiness, and I saw nobody
talking about it I made adecision.
One of my two co-founders thatI brought in to support me is my
(19:33):
chief marketing officer,courtney.
She's awesome and she'sactually done a lot of
podcasting in the past, and whatI decided was there was a blue
ocean, there was an opportunity,there was a void in the market,
and that one of the best thingsthat you can do at a point like
this, at these inflectionpoints that they happen maybe
two or three times in a lifetime, if you're lucky right is you
(19:55):
can actually stake a claim.
And so we decided to plant aflag.
We actually formally launchedthe company on September 5th I
think it was of 2023.
It was that exact same week.
We published our very firstpodcast episode.
We've been doing it every weeksince for this reason.
Now here's the fun part.
Let's talk about the results,not the reason why, within two
(20:16):
and a half months, we had notonly found the product that we
thought we'd build, because wefound some real pain.
We actually landed our firstcustomer without having a single
line of code written or anengineer on staff Wow, and they
were an inbound lead that foundus through our thought
leadership and the podcast.
(20:37):
Amazing, that's the power ofmedia these days.
Right, fast forward about gosh.
It was probably six or sevenmonths ago.
We started to see a new trendin our lead flow.
Like what is this?
We started getting on the phoneand talking to new prospects
that were inbound.
We had no connection towhatsoever.
(20:58):
We're asking where'd you findthem?
And we started to hear a theme.
Openai told me to reach out toyou.
It was like what?
Well, we have seen.
Probably in January, we sawjust this really take off, where
we had now put out enoughcontent that you know.
If you go ask about not evencommercial intelligence but how
(21:18):
do I score my client healthright, derivatives of that and
you talk about being arelationship business, open AI,
chatgpt will point you directlyto Nunwell.
Those are the types of resultswe're seeing just from being in
the digital content space andprioritizing our thought
leadership.
Funny enough, it's also helpedus internally.
It helps you perfect ideasright, and so our product has
(21:41):
come a long way.
I just I'm a huge fan of it.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Yeah, I was just at AI Mavericks a couple months ago
and it was all CEOs andfounders and AI companies and
talking about exactly whatyou're saying.
Now we're seeing podcast SEO.
So people are searching for hey, I want to know about this.
It's leading them to podcasts.
If you go into chat or Brock orClaude or Perplexity or all of
(22:07):
the different systems, copilot,right, all the different ones
that I'm not mentioning as welland you type in a prompt and you
want to ask about something,your companies are starting to
come up.
Search is moving.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Yeah.
So that's fantastic and I lovehearing this because this is
what I preach about podcastingbut often, you know, people say,
okay, that's nice, and I talkabout my experience and all the
opportunities it's brought me,but you're using a real example
of a business case where you'regetting so much inbound traffic
from that.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Yeah, I mean to give your listeners a comparison.
You know 16 years of buildingthree pillar right.
Multiple hundreds of millionsof dollars in revenue per year.
Like we scaled the business andI have better lead flow now in
known well, a year and a halfold, with 22 employees, than I
did at 3Pillar with 2,500employees, a real marketing
(22:59):
budget and 16 years ofperformance right.
That's the difference.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
What does it mean to you to be a purpose-driven
leader?
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Because I know that is something that's really
important to you, yeah, so to me, it means living what I believe
, right?
I think so often we talk.
One of my pet peeves in thebusiness world is we talk a lot
about work-life balance, andthat term drives me nuts.
Not because I don't love myfamily I've got eight kids and a
beautiful wife of 25 years.
I love my family, right, I lovemy life.
(23:30):
There's lots of things I loveabout it.
What drives me crazy is that thephrase pits your work against
your life.
Right, and I am a single humanbeing.
I am right now sitting here.
I am a father, and you betterbelieve that if I get an SOS
message that my daughter or myson is in the hospital, I'm
going to walk out and go RightAt the same time when I'm
(23:51):
putting my kids down to bed atnight.
I'm still a CEO.
And if I get a text messagethat one of my employees is in
the hospital or fire is goingoff, you better believe that I'm
also going to leave at thatpoint in time.
And this world we've created,where one has to be against the
other versus working in synergy,drives me nuts, right, and so
(24:13):
for me, my purpose is I reallybelieve that business should
elevate the humanity of people,and I've found a business where
I can live that purpose, notjust in how I run my business,
which is what I was able to dolast time.
I was able to build a culturethat promoted that.
That's still important, but Iwant to be able to actually
(24:36):
build and to elevate humanity.
Allow people to be better wives, husbands, mothers, fathers,
friends, skateboarders whateveryou want to be right At the same
time of thriving in your work,and I do believe that both are
very possible, and I've beenvery blessed to be able to live
a life where both have beenpossible for me, and so I want
(24:56):
to pass that along, and I thinkthe world's a better place when
that happens, and so I want tomake sure that I wake up every
single day.
Being a purpose-driven leadermeans that is why I show up,
that is why I build the business, it's why I make the hard
decisions in the business.
It's not for other alternativereasons.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Yeah, we are, in some ways, so the same person.
Everything you're saying I'mlike yes, yes, yes.
All of that are true to who Iam as well.
So, piggybacking on that, whatdoes it take to be a good
startup founder?
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Hmm, man.
So this is a hard questionbecause there's so much there,
but I boil it down to one simplephrase and I call it humble
confidence.
I think the successfulentrepreneur what I have seen
has to be so stubborn that theywill not give up on their vision
(25:53):
, but has to be so humble thatthey can learn along the way how
to evolve that and how tonavigate the path to get there,
because it's never a straightline and those two things on the
surface seem incredibly inconflict.
Rarely do you find someone withextreme confidence, that won't
(26:16):
give up, that is stubborn I'mgoing to will this to happen and
an incredible humility to say Idon't know what I don't know
and I want to learn from otherpeople, and I don't have to be
the right person in the room andI don't have to be the smartest
person in the room, and I thinkthat combination is at the
heart of every successfulentrepreneur.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
And I feel like not everybody has that focus and
that centeredness in theirventures but, this is what the
future should look like.
I hope so, yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
I hope so.
You know there's a lot ofentrepreneurs that you know, two
broad brush flavors.
There are those that startbusinesses because they have a
passion for what they're doingand sometimes that's the work
itself, the industry itself, theproblem they're solving.
Sometimes it's their purpose,right?
You have other entrepreneurswho do it for the money, they do
it for the success, they do itfor the recognition.
In my experience, the odds ofsuccess are so in favor of those
(27:19):
that do it for a differentreason.
It's not power and it's notmoney.
When the entrepreneurs go outand they start something for
those selfish means nine timesout of 10, just from anecdotes
of the people I've seen, thefriends I've had, the rooms I've
been in they tend to fail.
They could be successful fortwo or three years, maybe five
years.
They're not enduring companies.
(27:39):
They could be successful fortwo or three years, maybe five
years.
They're not enduring companies.
They don't build greatbusinesses.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Let's take it back a little further.
I teach for two master'sprograms the master's in digital
media management and thedigital social media.
I've also taught the master'sin PR and advertising branding.
You were a media major, I was,yeah.
So, this goes hand in handbecause our students right now
(28:05):
are in that convergence of mediaand technology.
So what was your path fromstraight media into?
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Yeah, my path was really pragmatic.
I graduated from school and myvery first job offer was from a
radio station in Buffalo, newYork, paying me $17,000 a year.
And my now wife, who was myfiance at the time, said oh, I'm
not going to Buffalo, new York,and you can't support a family
on that.
So I ended up in Dallas, texas,and so my first real job not my
(28:38):
job offer was actually workingfor an ad agency and I had.
This was right at the height ofthe dot com.
This was 1999.
I had learned over the years.
I had one class in school andjust had a passion for I knew
how to write HTML and so this adagency hired me to do quote new
media.
I was building websites and myvery first client at that ad
(29:03):
agency and I was a temp worker.
It was only there three months,but my very first client for
him was a software company andwe were building a website for a
software company and I ended upgoing consulting with that
client and, turns out, the CTOof that organization happened to
really like me and offered me ajob and I ended up going into
(29:24):
user experience design for theCTO and then quickly became a
front-end engineer and thenwithin a year became an engineer
on the CTO's team Fun part.
He is now my chief scientist atKnownWell.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Oh my gosh, careful.
I love that.
What advice would you give tostudents of today who are
looking at you know, obviouslywe talked about a few things
before we jumped on that really,everybody needs to know how to
use AI tools.
I'm hearing I mean, we've beentalking about this a few months
ago.
(29:57):
The narrative was you won't befired from your role if you
don't know AI, but if you don'tknow AI and now I'm having CEOs
literally tell me yeah, we'renot hiring people because if
they don't have a baselineknowledge, they can't operate in
our business structure.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
I actually think this dilemma goes back to something
that is kind of a deeper, deeperproblem within our society.
You know, I think that we havegotten into this mode for a long
time.
Everybody just had to go off tocollege because it's the thing
that you do and there was reallyno discernment of what was I
made for, what are my gifts,what are my talents, what are my
passions no-transcript reminderof is get back to the heart of
(31:04):
what you love and what you'regreat at and find that
intersection.
Now you have to intersect itwith something where you can
make a living at as well.
It's really important.
But I think, instead of justpicking a profession or just
making your parents happy orjust doing something because it
is the most prestigious thing oryou'll make the most money it's
kind of like the entrepreneurconversation we had those that
(31:25):
go do it for the money, theprestige, aren't the most
successful, they're definitelynot the most fulfilled, right.
But if you can find thatpurpose, if you can find that
reason that you are uniquelyqualified to do, I think you
will thrive.
And you will thrive even in aworld where AI is coming for
(31:45):
everything and you will.
What we're seeing in real timeleveraging it.
We're an AI company, but westill have humans.
We're using the AI.
We are seeing that it's thosethat have deep expertise and a
passion and a love for what theydo.
They treat their job as a craft.
They actually get the biggestand best benefit from the AI.
(32:07):
It takes them those are alreadyoperating 3x 10x greater than
their peers.
It takes them to 20x, 40x, andI think that's who you want to
be.
You want to hone in to what'suniquely you.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
Yeah, yeah, fantastic .
Well, you're preaching to thechoir here.
I've loved our conversation.
I want to understand a littlebit more about.
I understand that you'reonboarding professional services
companies into a beta.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
We are, yeah.
So this platform we've talkedabout it's live, it's deployed
in customers and it is having atremendous impact.
We're seeing reduced churn,increased growth all coming from
de-risking your client base,because you know them and you
can execute on it, and so we'reproviding metrics and insights
and we actually giverecommendations.
(32:55):
Here's what you should do.
Our platform surfaces up verypersonalized recommendations.
This is what you should do tostrengthen this client
relationship.
The results of that are throughthe roof.
It's going really well, and sowe've just actually opened up a
few brand new spots in our betaprogram.
And if you are running a middlemarket professional services
organization, if you have atleast 25, 30 clients, you're
(33:20):
probably encountering theprofessional services paradox,
and we can help solve that, andwe would love to work with
innovative companies that wantto help us shape the direction
of this product and really useit early on.
So go to knownwellcom and checkit out and we'd love to talk to
you.
Fantastic.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Well, this is going to be mandatory listen or watch
for my students.
This is exactly what we'retalking about right now the
changing ecosystem.
What people really need torealize that we are going to be
more human in this age of AI andagentic AI and Web4 and all the
things that are coming at usfaster than we realize.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
Totally.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
And you're hitting the spot so well on really
understanding your customer,understanding how to keep your
existing customer informant,even deeper relationship with
them.
So thank you, David DeWolf, forbringing your expertise to
Mediascape today.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
It was so much fun.
I really enjoyed theconversation.
Thanks for having me, Annika.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Likewise, and we'll have your website in the show
notes and thank you to everybodywho's watching this episode or
listening to it on your favoriteplatform.
I am Annika Jackson, one of thehosts of Mediascape Insights
from Digital Changemakers, runby USC's MS in Digital Media
Management Program.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
To learn more about the Master of Science in Digital
Media Management Program, visitus on the web at dmmuscedu.
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