What if you could transform your leadership approach and empower your team to reach new heights? Join us as we chat with John Fly, the insightful CTO of FirmPilot AI, who shares his wisdom on servant leadership. With over thirty years in the tech industry, John believes that the secret to successful leadership lies in being the mentor you wish you had—guiding, supporting, and inspiring your team just like a great coach. Through his personal stories, John sheds light on the power of sharing knowledge and nurturing the next generation of leaders in a collaborative and empowering environment.
But that's not all. Our discussion takes us on FirmPilot's innovative journey in the MarTech space, where generative AI is reshaping content creation. John reveals how the company is revolutionizing SEO-optimized marketing content while emphasizing the crucial balance between AI efficiency and human oversight. As we navigate through the future of AI in marketing, we uncover the societal impacts and challenges of this technology shift, drawing parallels to past innovations. Alongside these insights, John shares how FirmPilot is gearing up for growth and scalability, with agile practices and a strong tech infrastructure. It's an episode packed with insights and forward-thinking strategies, sure to engage and inspire tech leaders and marketing enthusiasts alike.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
If he sees somebody that needs help to do.
The hardest thing I think wecan do and that is to be the
manager or leader for somebodyelse that we wished we had had
during a hard moment and likejust really be who we wished we
had available in some toughtimes, and I think that's really
(00:20):
what I think a servant leaderor a serving leader is.
It's that mindset of I'm nothere to pull you along or force
you down a path.
I am here to lift you up orgive you the help and support to
help you be the best.
Now, I think there's a fineline here between helping
(00:40):
somebody be their best andcoddling helping somebody be
their best and coddling and so Itypically even though I'm not
the biggest sports guy, I dotend to lean into like the
coaching sports team mentalitywhen I explain to people love
the people what I think thatmeans.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Welcome everyone.
You're listening to Seed toExit and, as always, you're
hosted by Reece Keck.
Today, I'm joined by John Fly.
John is the CTO of FirmPilot AI, a Series A SaaS company in the
MarTech space.
Now he's coming with over threedecades of experience in
hands-on software engineering aswell as technology leadership.
But he's not just bringingtechnical skills to the table.
He's also an MBA graduate and acurrent doctoral candidate in
(01:20):
strategic leadership at LibertyUniversity.
So, without waiting any longer,let's go ahead and get into the
episode.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
You're listening to the Seed to Exit podcast with
your host, rhys Keck.
Here you'll learn from startupexecutives, founders, investors
and industry experts.
You'll learn from the bestabout building amazing products,
scaling companies, raisingcapital, hiring the right people
and more.
Subscribe and listen in for newepisodes and enjoy the show.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
All right, well, welcome to another episode of
Seed to Exit.
Today I'm speaking with JohnFly.
John, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, absolutely, so I'mexcited to talk with you.
I love when leaders have theirown website.
That kind of lets me dive alittle bit more into who they
are beyond just like looking ata LinkedIn profile.
So I've gotten a couple ofinsights from that that I'm
(02:14):
really excited to talk to youabout.
And then, of course, I want tolearn a little bit more about
FirmPilot and some of the workyou guys are doing over there
over there.
But in terms of getting to knowyou more because really you
know who you are shapes thedecisions you make and how you
approach your career.
There was something I saw onyour website that I thought was
really interesting, which issort of your tagline, which was
sharing knowledge is thecornerstone of growth, and so I
(02:37):
always think, of course, thatknowledge is the cornerstone to
growth, but I thought that itwas really interesting that you
specified that sharing knowledgewas a cornerstone to growth,
and so I was just curious abouthow you think about that and how
that line of thinking came tobe Sure.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
So especially as I've gotten older and taken on more
and more of the leadership rolesI've had to adjust my mindset
on, like, how do I my bringingvalue, um, and not just, not
just like dollars and cents, butlike to fulfill my days.
Like, how am I bringing my all?
And I think more and more uh,to me that's shifting into how
(03:14):
do I help the next kind ofgeneration, how do I help my
teams?
Because my teams, uh, will beable to accomplish so much more
than I could personally, whetherit's software engineering or
product design or ideation orjust whatever.
So I think, more and more overthe years, my job has become
(03:34):
framed around using myexperience to help others, and I
think none of us likes to havethat micromanager right, the one
that just tells you what to do,right?
So if you tell somebody youhave to do this task and here's
how you're going to do it,that's like no one enjoys that
really.
So I think the key to reallygetting the most productivity
(03:58):
out of myself and everyone I'maround is taking that moment to
be that kind of coach and mentorand explaining.
Here's the outcome that I thinkwe're after.
Here's some of my ideas.
Here's where I've been.
Here's what I've seen tohopefully let them you know, not
learn the hard way.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Okay, yeah, I love that I mean, I think we've all
had that, that micromanager, inthe past and usually it's
something that nobody remembersvery fondly.
And you've sort of taken onthat new school idea of servant
leadership, which is very muchit's the bottom or the top
really working to empower thequote unquote bottom or staff or
(04:39):
team, as opposed to it's abi-directional flow as opposed
to a one-way directional flow.
And that resonates with mebecause I I certainly take the
same approach with the folksthat I manage.
So I was curious what?
What does servant leadershipmean to you?
And then, how do you, how doyou support your team, how do
you actively do that?
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Sure.
So I think as we were chattinggetting ready for this call, you
mentioned the puzzle behind meand I told you I built that with
my son when he was like two orthree and now he's he's grown
and married and moved out andhe's actually a manager now.
And so when he stepped in fromstepped up into management, one
of the things I suggested to himis, you know, when he's
(05:22):
presented with a situation, whensomebody comes to him for help,
or if he sees somebody thatneeds help to do, the hardest
thing I think we can do and thatis to be the manager or leader
for somebody else that we wishedwe had had during a hard moment
and, um, like just really bewho we wished we had available,
(05:43):
um, in some tough times.
And I think that's really what Ithink a servant leader or a
serving leader is.
It's that mindset of I'm nothere to pull you along or force
you down a path.
I am here to lift you up orgive you the help and support to
help you be the best.
Now, I think there's a fineline here between like helping
(06:06):
somebody be their best andcoddling, and so I typically
even though I'm not the biggestsports guy.
I do tend to lean into like thecoaching sports team mentality
when I explain to people alittle bit deeper what I think
that means.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Okay, totally makes sense.
And speaking of, you knowcoaching and um, you know even
the puzzle behind you.
I know that you're you're biginto do it yourself, minimalism,
sustainability and yourpersonal life.
I'm not sure if this rings abell to you at all, but are you
familiar with the Mr Moneymustache blog?
By any chance?
I am not, but I will check thatout.
(06:40):
You should, you should check itout, um, especially especially
given the beard.
But no, it's very much a guywho's kind of it's an older blog
.
I think it's heyday wasprobably about five years ago,
maybe 10 years ago, but he verymuch is into sustainability and
frugality and so some of thestuff that you echo kind of
reminded me of him, even thoughI hadn't checked the blog in a
(07:02):
while.
But I was curious if thatphilosophy and mindset that you
have when it comes to yourpersonal life bleeds into or
affects your work life at all or, if so, how.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
It definitely does, just like I think everybody
who's been a professional forany length of time has had that.
You know that micromanagingmanager, that you know, manager,
that we hope we don't haveagain or hopefully we don't
become.
I've also been in companieswhere I felt they weren't being
good stewards of the companyfinancially and just in many
(07:36):
other ways.
But financially I had aterrible experience one time
early on in my managementleadership track where I knew
the company had blown a lot ofmoney on parties and benefits
and perks for their sales staffand I was then informed that we
(07:57):
were out of money for bonusesfor the team for that year.
And of course I had to tellmany people that you know, for
reasons we had had budgetoverruns and there wouldn't be
any raises or benefits orbonuses coming out that year.
That was tough.
That was tough news for me toroll out, knowing that the
(08:19):
company had literally basicallyblown a ton of that money on
parties for a tiny fraction ofthe company.
So I think we should be goodstewards of the company and I
think frugality comes into playthere.
I don't want people to bewasting money.
I want people to be thinkingacross the organization.
(08:40):
What's the best move for me,what's the best move to help the
company?
And I don't think that has tobe overly focused on, you know,
capitalism and profits.
I think it's just how do wemake work not be a terrible
experience, and by judiciouslyunderstanding the best financial
(09:02):
decisions at every level wemake the company more successful
in the long run, and thatusually means less likelihood to
have layoffs, which that's onething that people need to
understand really impacts humanlives.
So I think you know you cankind of bring all this in and
just think how do I do my bestin every aspect of my job?
Speaker 2 (09:25):
What were the ramifications of that situation
that you just described to me?
Just curious.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Well, it was not a deep tech company.
It had technology andmanufacturing components to it
of the morale out of the teamand company at large, especially
since, you know, through otheravenues, it was kind of
(09:53):
understood what had happened andit kind of bred an us and them
mentality where themanufacturing and technology
departments in the company wereobviously felt as lesser than
the sales team, because it wasquite a lot of money in the end
(10:13):
that was spent on the sales side.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah, and I think leaders often really
underestimate the damage thatbad morale does when it comes to
companies, because that thenleads to turnover, which leads
to loss of institutionalknowledge or, on the technical
side, tech debt, and it justbecomes a nasty, nasty snowball
very quickly.
It erodes trust, yeah, yeah.
Well, speaking of the technicalside, I would love to switch
(10:37):
gears a little bit and talkabout FirmPilot.
So for anyone who's notfamiliar with FirmPilot, you've
gotten a lot of tractionrecently.
You recently raised your $7million Series A.
I read some online reviews.
Customers are raving andobviously it's been a relatively
short journey for you.
You've been there a little lessthan a year.
But what's the journey beenlike so far, particularly as you
got through the fundraisingprocess?
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Yeah, this has been a really excellent last few
months.
So I joined FirmPilot earlyDecember of last year, very
fresh company.
So our CEO, jake, founded itearly last year, so really young
company, had a terrific run.
The idea when it was foundedwas you know how much can we
kind of leverage these new, youknow generative AI toolings to
(11:24):
be successful in marketing?
And while I have used marketingagencies in the past, this is my
first foray in MarTech as aproduct and I've been just
thrilled because you know theway I kind of describe it is we
take the ego out of a lot ofmarketing services so we provide
highly focused, seo optimizedcontent for blog posts and
(11:48):
social media posts and a lot ofthe surrounding services to our
customers.
What we do is we deliver higherrankings and more targeted
customer acquisition for ourclients and our results are
pretty staggering.
I've in previous companies I'veleveraged human driven
marketing agencies.
While they're great forideation and brand and like
(12:13):
awareness and ad campaigns likeout-of-office ad campaigns
FirmPilot is delivering verysuccessful, highly
utilitarian-based marketingcollateral.
So we're just delivering ourcustomers exactly what they want
, no fuss, and we're deliveringa ton of content each and every
(12:34):
month in a highly technical way.
So it's kind of the contentfactory model.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Okay.
And so when you say taking theego out of marketing, is it the
ego of the marketer or the egoof the lawyer that you're taking
out?
Speaker 1 (12:50):
the marketer or the ego of the lawyer that you're
taking out.
It's a bit of both, but it'smostly the marketer.
So I don't want to downplay thehuman aspect, because I really
think these generative AItooling there's no golden hammer
right, there's no silver bullet, and so, even though we're
leveraging generative AI and NLPtechnology to a huge extent at
FirmPilot, what we do is wecraft highly factual, highly
(13:13):
relevant and highly SEOoptimized blog and social media
posts.
In the past I have worked withsome terrific content writers
and long form content and thathuman touch.
That's still very difficult toget out of the Gen AI tooling.
But if you need to just kind ofcompete in this online you know
(13:36):
SEO ranking world you just kindof have to play the game of
content Right, and so usingthese tools to supplement human
processes is like we're beingterrifically successful there.
So I think hopefully this isgoing to help the marketers who
really want to take their timeto craft something special, a
(13:57):
long form piece of content orsomething highly specialized.
You know that's that's probablystill needs the human touch
we're generating, you know,quite relevant, good short form
content.
Ok, that makes sense, and soreally the way that I think
about that is, if I'm themarketer, we're generating, you
know, quite relevant good shortform content.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Okay, that makes sense.
And so really the way that Ithink about that is, if I'm the
marketer and you know I have mycontent calendar and I've got to
push out my socials and myshort posts I can work on, I can
more or less let FirmPilothandle those, and then anything
that's complex that I reallyhave to sit down and kind of you
know, stare at for a few hoursand then start powering that up.
That's what's still best forthe human.
(14:31):
Yeah, yeah, I think so.
Okay, is there ever a point doyou think where you know either
your AI technology or other AItechnology will get to the point
where it can do that long formwork as well?
Or is there going to be a pointwhere you always think we, we
always are going to need a humanin the loop to this?
Speaker 1 (14:53):
in this to some extent.
So I think the goal is to tryand hit that long-form content
creation and by long-form I meansomething that's pages and
pages like a multi-page type ofpost or something really
multimedia a long-form,multi-page experience with text
and animations and video,something very detailed.
Our post can go a couple ofpages.
(15:14):
We can do the text, theformatting, the artwork, but I
think the goal is to try and getbetter and better.
I think there's still a lot ofhype in the AI space.
We use a lot of generative AItooling in our development
process, but I still have tohave human oversight right.
Even the best coding tools atthis point are still in the
(15:38):
tools category.
I don't believe there is anytool out there that can replace
a human almost in any job as afull replacement.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Yeah, no, I totally agree.
I think at this point it'sgoing to be, you know, a very
savvy person who's leveragingand utilizing a lot of these
tools to, you know, have oneperson do the work of five, or
something along those linesExactly.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
That's what it seems like Cool.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
What has been the biggest challenge as you've come
on to FirmPilot either fromlike a, you know, a technical or
growth or product perspective?
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Pilot, either from a technical or growth or product
perspective.
Well, luckily, the team here atFirm Pilot is really bright and
really helpful across the board, from business and product, and
the tech team we put togetheris really excellent.
I think one of the challengesin this space is that AI hype,
though I think you have a lot ofpeople that are very skeptical,
(16:34):
and then you have people whothink it's already ready to.
You know, take over the worldand it should be able to do
anything and everything.
And when we talk to ourcustomers, the message is what
we bring is very targeted.
The message is what we bring isvery targeted, and our job is
(16:58):
to help you get high searchrankings, high visibility on
your social media platforms.
In search results.
We bring eyes to your website.
The content we write is highlyfactual, highly accurate and
it's a good read.
It doesn't, you know, can't be.
Oh, that was an AI article.
The intent is to help convertthat website visitor into a lead
(17:20):
or a customer.
After that, it's on thecustomer to pick up that
relationship and run with it andmake that lead a customer, and
so, while the AI and the contentare a large portion of that,
it's not magic, right.
So I think that blend ofhelping the skeptics understand
(17:48):
what really is possible is quiteamazing.
And then helping maybe groundsome people with AI is going to
do everything.
For me it's like no, it's goingto do some things really well.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Yeah, yeah, cause I've I've definitely seen a lot
of the.
I mean, I guess it depends onhow you think about the role of
AI in our society, becausethere's some people you could
call it like the AI doomer,which is like oh no, you know,
we're going to, we're all goingto be out of jobs in two years.
And then, on the other side ofthat, people who also think that
there's that level of progress,but that's oh, we're going to
create an AI powered utopiansociety and nobody's going to
(18:17):
have to work anymore and we canwrite poems all day.
And I think those peopleprobably on both sides need to
temper their expectations alittle bit.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Yeah, and I ultimately think it's.
You know it's very difficult tounderstand where it is going.
I'm, you know, hopefully I'mmore on the optimistic side.
I'm really amazed at the growthand progress in AI and just the
NLP and language tools thathave come out in the last months
(18:47):
.
Really the kind of mixed mode,the visualizations, the speech
aspects of these systems, likeGBT 4.0, really quite impressive
how you can interact with it.
But you know it's a trust butverify type of scenario.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Yeah, absolutely.
Have you gotten the chance todo the voice chat with 4.0 yet?
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Okay, I haven't.
I don't know.
I think they were just rollingthat out to select people.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
I, unfortunately, am not one of those lucky ones yet,
but I'm looking forward totrying it.
All of these systems, I meanit's amazing, but it's just
another way to interact with thesystem.
So, again, I think the way weinteract with technology is
definitely changing.
I think the way we interactwith technology is definitely
changing.
I mean, I remember going from,you know, corded, you know
landlines, to cell phones,entering kind of the zeitgeist
to smartphones, like I literallyremember, you know, when the
(19:45):
iPhone came out having that, isthis thing going to take off?
It could be a novelty.
You know.
I remember, right before that,BlackBerry, right, everybody
thought BlackBerry was awesome.
And then here's this thing withno keyboard, just an all flat
screen touch.
So, you know, nobody really sawall of that coming in the way
(20:06):
it has matured.
So I'm really interested to seehow this stuff continues to
mature and what it actuallybrings to, you know, real life.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I'm excited to see what things
are going to look like over thecourse of the next couple of
years.
When you think about just to goon this kind of a one off
question, but I was a little Iwas curious from a technical
perspective.
When you're thinking about thestuff you're building at
FirmPilot, you know particularlyI mean I don't know how closely
your customers are keeping upwith your fundraising, but
(20:38):
obviously you've got newfundraising, you have more
resources to do things and I'msure you're absolutely backed up
with, you know new featurerequests from customers or
things that they want tweaked.
But then at the same time,there are also things that are
expected to quote unquote justwork, like scalability,
infrastructure security, thingslike that.
How do you balance those needs,given the resources and the
(21:00):
team that you have?
It's a good question.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
So, luckily, when I came into FirmPilot, I was very
well supported by the otherexecutives.
They let me really build out avery strong kind of core senior
team and the team that we have.
We work very well together inkind of a true agile fashion,
(21:23):
and what that really means iseach day, or at least a couple
of times a week, there's reallygood discussion around what's
achievable, what do we know weneed to do, and, out of those
top level priorities, what canwe make progress on each week.
And what that's let us do ismove very quickly, kind of
(21:43):
showing our internal team andour customers incremental growth
, incremental progress, betterresults each and every week,
each and every month.
And that's tamped down.
Some of this typical early stagestuff's on fire, early tech
debt or just worry and fear.
So our tech is very reliable,our results are good and we're
(22:09):
moving into more and more likefuture facing, not gold plating
or overengineering, but buildingin some scalability and
adaptability, modularity intoour systems design and so, while
there has been some you know,some learning and rework, over
(22:30):
the last month it's really beenthat incremental growth strategy
.
So we're making really goodprogress.
We haven't had to take two orthree months for a retool or a
replatform and we haven't hadany major outages or suffered
any major accidental downtimedue to bugs or a misdeploy.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
That's great.
The small but mighty teamSounds like it's doing it.
So and this is a little bitmore back to the subject we were
just on when it comes to thefuture of AI.
But you know, with the rise ofnot only generative AI, nlp is
always continuing to improve.
How do you see the future ofmarketing evolving?
For, you know, professionalservices like lawyers, or
(23:13):
obviously there's other types ofprofessional services out there
but particularly in that typeof industry where
personalization is key, whetherthat be building a brand around
the firm owner or contentdelivery value things like that.
What is the future of the tech?
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Well, I can tell you the future of where we're trying
to take it is to really leaninto that personalization
concept quite heavily.
We believe very deeply that oneof the things that sets us
apart is we go really, reallydeep in understanding who our
clients are and we feed ourgenerative system immense amount
(23:53):
of data on our customers inevery step of the process, even
if we have human processes andquality checks, everything we do
is centered around theparticular customer, meaning
that customer persona isreflected in every bit of
content, every blog post, everysocial media post, every update
(24:16):
to any third party system thatwe're helping or we're guiding
them with language.
Who they are is really shiningthrough, and I think that's the
key.
I think that's where we'retrying to push forward with.
The technology is not being justa generalization service.
It's not write a blog post ontopic X Y Z, it's write a blog
(24:41):
post on topic X Y Z, and thenhere's tons of information on
the client.
Here's why it would make sense.
Here's the type of customerthey're trying to acquire,
here's why they're trying toacquire it.
So we really bake in thatclient profile into everything
we do, because, at the end ofthe day, if we're not bringing
(25:03):
the right people to ourcustomers, they're not going to
convert, they're not going toget the best experience that
they can bring to theircustomers Cool.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Well, I'm super excited to see how you continue
to grow things.
One final question for you, inthe spirit of servant leadership
what's the best advice youcould give up and coming
engineers or other technicalprofessionals just to advance in
their career?
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Well, I think the first one is really understand
the difference between, like,the individual contributor track
and a management track andreally try and figure out what
do you want to be doing in threeyears and five years and 10
years.
I think a lot of people getpushed into a management
leadership track in order togrow and oftentimes that's a bad
(25:52):
move.
If you're a passionate softwareengineer and you want to be a
builder and a doer and you'reseeing the management track as a
way to build and do the thingsyou want, that's probably a bad
move because more and more, thatleadership track is going to
take you more and more hands offin dealing with people.
(26:12):
So I would say, really try andreflect on who you are and what
you want to be doing and see ifthe company you're at supports
that type of future, love that.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
And I think, just to add to that, there is a little
bit of a misconception or a myththat leadership, and people
management specifically, is theonly growth track.
Because if you're a well-runtech company you should have
really parallel leadershiptracks of ICs and leadership
where the IC type is more of aprincipal engineer or architect,
(26:44):
where you have leadership overthe technical piece of the
product as an individualcontributor.
You just don't necessarily haveto manage people and I think to
a lot of folks, particularlyoftentimes engineers, that's
oftentimes more appealing.
Just sometimes they don't knowit exists.
Yeah yeah, 100% agree.
Cool.
Well, John, it was super greatchatting with you, excited to
(27:05):
see where you and FirmPilotcontinue to grow, and thank you
so much for coming on the show.
Wonderful, it was a greatexperience.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Thanks for having me Absolutely Thanks for listening
to See to Exit.
If you enjoyed the episode,don't forget to subscribe and
we'll see you next time.
If he sees somebody that needs help to do.
The hardest thing I think wecan do and that is to be the
manager or leader for somebodyelse that we wished we had had
during a hard moment and likejust really be who we wished we
had available in some toughtimes, and I think that's really
(00:20):
what I think a servant leaderor a serving leader is.
It's that mindset of I'm nothere to pull you along or force
you down a path.
I am here to lift you up orgive you the help and support to
help you be the best.
Now, I think there's a fineline here between helping
(00:40):
somebody be their best andcoddling helping somebody be
their best and coddling and so Itypically even though I'm not
the biggest sports guy, I dotend to lean into like the
coaching sports team mentalitywhen I explain to people love
the people what I think thatmeans.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Welcome everyone.
You're listening to Seed toExit and, as always, you're
hosted by Reece Keck.
Today, I'm joined by John Fly.
John is the CTO of FirmPilot AI, a Series A SaaS company in the
MarTech space.
Now he's coming with over threedecades of experience in
hands-on software engineering aswell as technology leadership.
But he's not just bringingtechnical skills to the table.
He's also an MBA graduate and acurrent doctoral candidate in
(01:20):
strategic leadership at LibertyUniversity.
So, without waiting any longer,let's go ahead and get into the
episode.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
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and industry experts.
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Subscribe and listen in for newepisodes and enjoy the show.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
All right, well, welcome to another episode of
Seed to Exit.
Today I'm speaking with JohnFly.
John, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, absolutely, so I'mexcited to talk with you.
I love when leaders have theirown website.
That kind of lets me dive alittle bit more into who they
are beyond just like looking ata LinkedIn profile.
So I've gotten a couple ofinsights from that that I'm
(02:14):
really excited to talk to youabout.
And then, of course, I want tolearn a little bit more about
FirmPilot and some of the workyou guys are doing over there
over there.
But in terms of getting to knowyou more because really you
know who you are shapes thedecisions you make and how you
approach your career.
There was something I saw onyour website that I thought was
really interesting, which issort of your tagline, which was
sharing knowledge is thecornerstone of growth, and so I
(02:37):
always think, of course, thatknowledge is the cornerstone to
growth, but I thought that itwas really interesting that you
specified that sharing knowledgewas a cornerstone to growth,
and so I was just curious abouthow you think about that and how
that line of thinking came tobe Sure.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
So especially as I've gotten older and taken on more
and more of the leadership rolesI've had to adjust my mindset
on, like, how do I my bringingvalue, um, and not just, not
just like dollars and cents, butlike to fulfill my days.
Like, how am I bringing my all?
And I think more and more uh,to me that's shifting into how
(03:14):
do I help the next kind ofgeneration, how do I help my
teams?
Because my teams, uh, will beable to accomplish so much more
than I could personally, whetherit's software engineering or
product design or ideation orjust whatever.
So I think, more and more overthe years, my job has become
(03:34):
framed around using myexperience to help others, and I
think none of us likes to havethat micromanager right, the one
that just tells you what to do,right?
So if you tell somebody youhave to do this task and here's
how you're going to do it,that's like no one enjoys that
really.
So I think the key to reallygetting the most productivity
(03:58):
out of myself and everyone I'maround is taking that moment to
be that kind of coach and mentorand explaining.
Here's the outcome that I thinkwe're after.
Here's some of my ideas.
Here's where I've been.
Here's what I've seen tohopefully let them you know, not
learn the hard way.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Okay, yeah, I love that I mean, I think we've all
had that, that micromanager, inthe past and usually it's
something that nobody remembersvery fondly.
And you've sort of taken onthat new school idea of servant
leadership, which is very muchit's the bottom or the top
really working to empower thequote unquote bottom or staff or
(04:39):
team, as opposed to it's abi-directional flow as opposed
to a one-way directional flow.
And that resonates with mebecause I I certainly take the
same approach with the folksthat I manage.
So I was curious what?
What does servant leadershipmean to you?
And then, how do you, how doyou support your team, how do
you actively do that?
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Sure.
So I think as we were chattinggetting ready for this call, you
mentioned the puzzle behind meand I told you I built that with
my son when he was like two orthree and now he's he's grown
and married and moved out andhe's actually a manager now.
And so when he stepped in fromstepped up into management, one
of the things I suggested to himis, you know, when he's
(05:22):
presented with a situation, whensomebody comes to him for help,
or if he sees somebody thatneeds help to do, the hardest
thing I think we can do and thatis to be the manager or leader
for somebody else that we wishedwe had had during a hard moment
and, um, like just really bewho we wished we had available,
(05:43):
um, in some tough times.
And I think that's really what Ithink a servant leader or a
serving leader is.
It's that mindset of I'm nothere to pull you along or force
you down a path.
I am here to lift you up orgive you the help and support to
help you be the best.
Now, I think there's a fineline here between like helping
(06:06):
somebody be their best andcoddling, and so I typically
even though I'm not the biggestsports guy.
I do tend to lean into like thecoaching sports team mentality
when I explain to people alittle bit deeper what I think
that means.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Okay, totally makes sense.
And speaking of, you knowcoaching and um, you know even
the puzzle behind you.
I know that you're you're biginto do it yourself, minimalism,
sustainability and yourpersonal life.
I'm not sure if this rings abell to you at all, but are you
familiar with the Mr Moneymustache blog?
By any chance?
I am not, but I will check thatout.
(06:40):
You should, you should check itout, um, especially especially
given the beard.
But no, it's very much a guywho's kind of it's an older blog
.
I think it's heyday wasprobably about five years ago,
maybe 10 years ago, but he verymuch is into sustainability and
frugality and so some of thestuff that you echo kind of
reminded me of him, even thoughI hadn't checked the blog in a
(07:02):
while.
But I was curious if thatphilosophy and mindset that you
have when it comes to yourpersonal life bleeds into or
affects your work life at all or, if so, how.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
It definitely does, just like I think everybody
who's been a professional forany length of time has had that.
You know that micromanagingmanager, that you know, manager,
that we hope we don't haveagain or hopefully we don't
become.
I've also been in companieswhere I felt they weren't being
good stewards of the companyfinancially and just in many
(07:36):
other ways.
But financially I had aterrible experience one time
early on in my managementleadership track where I knew
the company had blown a lot ofmoney on parties and benefits
and perks for their sales staffand I was then informed that we
(07:57):
were out of money for bonusesfor the team for that year.
And of course I had to tellmany people that you know, for
reasons we had had budgetoverruns and there wouldn't be
any raises or benefits orbonuses coming out that year.
That was tough.
That was tough news for me toroll out, knowing that the
(08:19):
company had literally basicallyblown a ton of that money on
parties for a tiny fraction ofthe company.
So I think we should be goodstewards of the company and I
think frugality comes into playthere.
I don't want people to bewasting money.
I want people to be thinkingacross the organization.
(08:40):
What's the best move for me,what's the best move to help the
company?
And I don't think that has tobe overly focused on, you know,
capitalism and profits.
I think it's just how do wemake work not be a terrible
experience, and by judiciouslyunderstanding the best financial
(09:02):
decisions at every level wemake the company more successful
in the long run, and thatusually means less likelihood to
have layoffs, which that's onething that people need to
understand really impacts humanlives.
So I think you know you cankind of bring all this in and
just think how do I do my bestin every aspect of my job?
Speaker 2 (09:25):
What were the ramifications of that situation
that you just described to me?
Just curious.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Well, it was not a deep tech company.
It had technology andmanufacturing components to it
of the morale out of the teamand company at large, especially
since, you know, through otheravenues, it was kind of
(09:53):
understood what had happened andit kind of bred an us and them
mentality where themanufacturing and technology
departments in the company wereobviously felt as lesser than
the sales team, because it wasquite a lot of money in the end
(10:13):
that was spent on the sales side.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah, and I think leaders often really
underestimate the damage thatbad morale does when it comes to
companies, because that thenleads to turnover, which leads
to loss of institutionalknowledge or, on the technical
side, tech debt, and it justbecomes a nasty, nasty snowball
very quickly.
It erodes trust, yeah, yeah.
Well, speaking of the technicalside, I would love to switch
(10:37):
gears a little bit and talkabout FirmPilot.
So for anyone who's notfamiliar with FirmPilot, you've
gotten a lot of tractionrecently.
You recently raised your $7million Series A.
I read some online reviews.
Customers are raving andobviously it's been a relatively
short journey for you.
You've been there a little lessthan a year.
But what's the journey beenlike so far, particularly as you
got through the fundraisingprocess?
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Yeah, this has been a really excellent last few
months.
So I joined FirmPilot earlyDecember of last year, very
fresh company.
So our CEO, jake, founded itearly last year, so really young
company, had a terrific run.
The idea when it was foundedwas you know how much can we
kind of leverage these new, youknow generative AI toolings to
(11:24):
be successful in marketing?
And while I have used marketingagencies in the past, this is my
first foray in MarTech as aproduct and I've been just
thrilled because you know theway I kind of describe it is we
take the ego out of a lot ofmarketing services so we provide
highly focused, seo optimizedcontent for blog posts and
(11:48):
social media posts and a lot ofthe surrounding services to our
customers.
What we do is we deliver higherrankings and more targeted
customer acquisition for ourclients and our results are
pretty staggering.
I've in previous companies I'veleveraged human driven
marketing agencies.
While they're great forideation and brand and like
(12:13):
awareness and ad campaigns likeout-of-office ad campaigns
FirmPilot is delivering verysuccessful, highly
utilitarian-based marketingcollateral.
So we're just delivering ourcustomers exactly what they want
, no fuss, and we're deliveringa ton of content each and every
(12:34):
month in a highly technical way.
So it's kind of the contentfactory model.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Okay.
And so when you say taking theego out of marketing, is it the
ego of the marketer or the egoof the lawyer that you're taking
out?
Speaker 1 (12:50):
the marketer or the ego of the lawyer that you're
taking out.
It's a bit of both, but it'smostly the marketer.
So I don't want to downplay thehuman aspect, because I really
think these generative AItooling there's no golden hammer
right, there's no silver bullet, and so, even though we're
leveraging generative AI and NLPtechnology to a huge extent at
FirmPilot, what we do is wecraft highly factual, highly
(13:13):
relevant and highly SEOoptimized blog and social media
posts.
In the past I have worked withsome terrific content writers
and long form content and thathuman touch.
That's still very difficult toget out of the Gen AI tooling.
But if you need to just kind ofcompete in this online you know
(13:36):
SEO ranking world you just kindof have to play the game of
content Right, and so usingthese tools to supplement human
processes is like we're beingterrifically successful there.
So I think hopefully this isgoing to help the marketers who
really want to take their timeto craft something special, a
(13:57):
long form piece of content orsomething highly specialized.
You know that's that's probablystill needs the human touch
we're generating, you know,quite relevant, good short form
content.
Ok, that makes sense, and soreally the way that I think
about that is, if I'm themarketer, we're generating, you
know, quite relevant good shortform content.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Okay, that makes sense.
And so really the way that Ithink about that is, if I'm the
marketer and you know I have mycontent calendar and I've got to
push out my socials and myshort posts I can work on, I can
more or less let FirmPilothandle those, and then anything
that's complex that I reallyhave to sit down and kind of you
know, stare at for a few hoursand then start powering that up.
That's what's still best forthe human.
(14:31):
Yeah, yeah, I think so.
Okay, is there ever a point doyou think where you know either
your AI technology or other AItechnology will get to the point
where it can do that long formwork as well?
Or is there going to be a pointwhere you always think we, we
always are going to need a humanin the loop to this?
Speaker 1 (14:53):
in this to some extent.
So I think the goal is to tryand hit that long-form content
creation and by long-form I meansomething that's pages and
pages like a multi-page type ofpost or something really
multimedia a long-form,multi-page experience with text
and animations and video,something very detailed.
Our post can go a couple ofpages.
(15:14):
We can do the text, theformatting, the artwork, but I
think the goal is to try and getbetter and better.
I think there's still a lot ofhype in the AI space.
We use a lot of generative AItooling in our development
process, but I still have tohave human oversight right.
Even the best coding tools atthis point are still in the
(15:38):
tools category.
I don't believe there is anytool out there that can replace
a human almost in any job as afull replacement.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Yeah, no, I totally agree.
I think at this point it'sgoing to be, you know, a very
savvy person who's leveragingand utilizing a lot of these
tools to, you know, have oneperson do the work of five, or
something along those linesExactly.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
That's what it seems like Cool.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
What has been the biggest challenge as you've come
on to FirmPilot either fromlike a, you know, a technical or
growth or product perspective?
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Pilot, either from a technical or growth or product
perspective.
Well, luckily, the team here atFirm Pilot is really bright and
really helpful across the board, from business and product, and
the tech team we put togetheris really excellent.
I think one of the challengesin this space is that AI hype,
though I think you have a lot ofpeople that are very skeptical,
(16:34):
and then you have people whothink it's already ready to.
You know, take over the worldand it should be able to do
anything and everything.
And when we talk to ourcustomers, the message is what
we bring is very targeted.
The message is what we bring isvery targeted, and our job is
(16:58):
to help you get high searchrankings, high visibility on
your social media platforms.
In search results.
We bring eyes to your website.
The content we write is highlyfactual, highly accurate and
it's a good read.
It doesn't, you know, can't be.
Oh, that was an AI article.
The intent is to help convertthat website visitor into a lead
(17:20):
or a customer.
After that, it's on thecustomer to pick up that
relationship and run with it andmake that lead a customer, and
so, while the AI and the contentare a large portion of that,
it's not magic, right.
So I think that blend ofhelping the skeptics understand
(17:48):
what really is possible is quiteamazing.
And then helping maybe groundsome people with AI is going to
do everything.
For me it's like no, it's goingto do some things really well.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Yeah, yeah, cause I've I've definitely seen a lot
of the.
I mean, I guess it depends onhow you think about the role of
AI in our society, becausethere's some people you could
call it like the AI doomer,which is like oh no, you know,
we're going to, we're all goingto be out of jobs in two years.
And then, on the other side ofthat, people who also think that
there's that level of progress,but that's oh, we're going to
create an AI powered utopiansociety and nobody's going to
(18:17):
have to work anymore and we canwrite poems all day.
And I think those peopleprobably on both sides need to
temper their expectations alittle bit.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Yeah, and I ultimately think it's.
You know it's very difficult tounderstand where it is going.
I'm, you know, hopefully I'mmore on the optimistic side.
I'm really amazed at the growthand progress in AI and just the
NLP and language tools thathave come out in the last months
(18:47):
.
Really the kind of mixed mode,the visualizations, the speech
aspects of these systems, likeGBT 4.0, really quite impressive
how you can interact with it.
But you know it's a trust butverify type of scenario.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Yeah, absolutely.
Have you gotten the chance todo the voice chat with 4.0 yet?
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Okay, I haven't.
I don't know.
I think they were just rollingthat out to select people.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
I, unfortunately, am not one of those lucky ones yet,
but I'm looking forward totrying it.
All of these systems, I meanit's amazing, but it's just
another way to interact with thesystem.
So, again, I think the way weinteract with technology is
definitely changing.
I think the way we interactwith technology is definitely
changing.
I mean, I remember going from,you know, corded, you know
landlines, to cell phones,entering kind of the zeitgeist
to smartphones, like I literallyremember, you know, when the
(19:45):
iPhone came out having that, isthis thing going to take off?
It could be a novelty.
You know.
I remember, right before that,BlackBerry, right, everybody
thought BlackBerry was awesome.
And then here's this thing withno keyboard, just an all flat
screen touch.
So, you know, nobody really sawall of that coming in the way
(20:06):
it has matured.
So I'm really interested to seehow this stuff continues to
mature and what it actuallybrings to, you know, real life.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I'm excited to see what things
are going to look like over thecourse of the next couple of
years.
When you think about just to goon this kind of a one off
question, but I was a little Iwas curious from a technical
perspective.
When you're thinking about thestuff you're building at
FirmPilot, you know particularlyI mean I don't know how closely
your customers are keeping upwith your fundraising, but
(20:38):
obviously you've got newfundraising, you have more
resources to do things and I'msure you're absolutely backed up
with, you know new featurerequests from customers or
things that they want tweaked.
But then at the same time,there are also things that are
expected to quote unquote justwork, like scalability,
infrastructure security, thingslike that.
How do you balance those needs,given the resources and the
(21:00):
team that you have?
It's a good question.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
So, luckily, when I came into FirmPilot, I was very
well supported by the otherexecutives.
They let me really build out avery strong kind of core senior
team and the team that we have.
We work very well together inkind of a true agile fashion,
(21:23):
and what that really means iseach day, or at least a couple
of times a week, there's reallygood discussion around what's
achievable, what do we know weneed to do, and, out of those
top level priorities, what canwe make progress on each week.
And what that's let us do ismove very quickly, kind of
(21:43):
showing our internal team andour customers incremental growth
, incremental progress, betterresults each and every week,
each and every month.
And that's tamped down.
Some of this typical early stagestuff's on fire, early tech
debt or just worry and fear.
So our tech is very reliable,our results are good and we're
(22:09):
moving into more and more likefuture facing, not gold plating
or overengineering, but buildingin some scalability and
adaptability, modularity intoour systems design and so, while
there has been some you know,some learning and rework, over
(22:30):
the last month it's really beenthat incremental growth strategy
.
So we're making really goodprogress.
We haven't had to take two orthree months for a retool or a
replatform and we haven't hadany major outages or suffered
any major accidental downtimedue to bugs or a misdeploy.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
That's great.
The small but mighty teamSounds like it's doing it.
So and this is a little bitmore back to the subject we were
just on when it comes to thefuture of AI.
But you know, with the rise ofnot only generative AI, nlp is
always continuing to improve.
How do you see the future ofmarketing evolving?
For, you know, professionalservices like lawyers, or
(23:13):
obviously there's other types ofprofessional services out there
but particularly in that typeof industry where
personalization is key, whetherthat be building a brand around
the firm owner or contentdelivery value things like that.
What is the future of the tech?
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Well, I can tell you the future of where we're trying
to take it is to really leaninto that personalization
concept quite heavily.
We believe very deeply that oneof the things that sets us
apart is we go really, reallydeep in understanding who our
clients are and we feed ourgenerative system immense amount
(23:53):
of data on our customers inevery step of the process, even
if we have human processes andquality checks, everything we do
is centered around theparticular customer, meaning
that customer persona isreflected in every bit of
content, every blog post, everysocial media post, every update
(24:16):
to any third party system thatwe're helping or we're guiding
them with language.
Who they are is really shiningthrough, and I think that's the
key.
I think that's where we'retrying to push forward with.
The technology is not being justa generalization service.
It's not write a blog post ontopic X Y Z, it's write a blog
(24:41):
post on topic X Y Z, and thenhere's tons of information on
the client.
Here's why it would make sense.
Here's the type of customerthey're trying to acquire,
here's why they're trying toacquire it.
So we really bake in thatclient profile into everything
we do, because, at the end ofthe day, if we're not bringing
(25:03):
the right people to ourcustomers, they're not going to
convert, they're not going toget the best experience that
they can bring to theircustomers Cool.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Well, I'm super excited to see how you continue
to grow things.
One final question for you, inthe spirit of servant leadership
what's the best advice youcould give up and coming
engineers or other technicalprofessionals just to advance in
their career?
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Well, I think the first one is really understand
the difference between, like,the individual contributor track
and a management track andreally try and figure out what
do you want to be doing in threeyears and five years and 10
years.
I think a lot of people getpushed into a management
leadership track in order togrow and oftentimes that's a bad
(25:52):
move.
If you're a passionate softwareengineer and you want to be a
builder and a doer and you'reseeing the management track as a
way to build and do the thingsyou want, that's probably a bad
move because more and more, thatleadership track is going to
take you more and more hands offin dealing with people.
(26:12):
So I would say, really try andreflect on who you are and what
you want to be doing and see ifthe company you're at supports
that type of future, love that.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
And I think, just to add to that, there is a little
bit of a misconception or a myththat leadership, and people
management specifically, is theonly growth track.
Because if you're a well-runtech company you should have
really parallel leadershiptracks of ICs and leadership
where the IC type is more of aprincipal engineer or architect,
(26:44):
where you have leadership overthe technical piece of the
product as an individualcontributor.
You just don't necessarily haveto manage people and I think to
a lot of folks, particularlyoftentimes engineers, that's
oftentimes more appealing.
Just sometimes they don't knowit exists.
Yeah yeah, 100% agree.
Cool.
Well, John, it was super greatchatting with you, excited to
(27:05):
see where you and FirmPilotcontinue to grow, and thank you
so much for coming on the show.
Wonderful, it was a greatexperience.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Thanks for having me Absolutely Thanks for listening
to See to Exit.
If you enjoyed the episode,don't forget to subscribe and
we'll see you next time.
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