August 21, 2025 • 31 mins
In this episode of Stories Worth Hearing, host John Quick sits down with Kelly Siegel, CEO of National Technology Management and best-selling author of Harder Than Life and Happier Than Life. Raised on Seven Mile in Detroit, Kelly transformed hardship into opportunity—growing a modern tech firm and becoming a leading voice for AI optimism.
Today, Kelly is spearheading a high-impact movement in partnership with Prompts.ai to make AI accessible, practical, and empowering for every worker. By rolling out no-code AI tools across Fortune-level companies, he's helping employees skyrocket productivity, reduce AI implementation costs by up to 98%, and fuse the power of 35+ AI models into one streamlined, secure experience.
Tune in to learn how Kelly’s path to success shaped his mission, how his books—Harder Than Life and Happier Than Life—reflect his philosophy, and why he believes AI is not a threat but a career supercharger.
Grab Kelly’s book here: Harder Than Life: Overcoming Poverty, Addiction, and Violence
Learn more about his work: TrustNTM.com | Prompts.ai
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome back to Stories Worth Hearing.
I'm John Quick, your host. Today I'm joined by Kelly
Siegel, the CEO of National Technology Management and the
best selling author of Harder than Life and Happier than Life.
Kelly grew up on 7 Mile in Detroit, faced adversity head
on, and went on to build a multi$1,000,000 tech firm.
Now he's leading a national movement to flip the script on
(00:21):
AI in the workplace. Instead of seeing AI as a
threat, Kelly shows us how it can make employees more valuable
than ever. Through his partnership with
Prompts dot AI, he's helping fortune level companies bring no
code, drag and drop AI tools to every department, boosting
productivity, cutting costs, andprotecting company data.
(00:42):
In this conversation, we'll talkabout Kelly's personal journey,
how he overcame hardship, why hebelieves AI is a career
accelerator, and what every employee and leader can do right
now to thrive in the AI driven economy.
So with that, let's welcome Kelly Siegel to the show.
Kelly, thank you so much for joining us.
This will be really fun to kind of hear a little bit about your
story, where you grew up, a bunch of the businesses that
(01:04):
you're involved in which I thinksome are very cutting edge.
But first I got to ask the question.
But I read that you grew up either on Eight Mile or near 8
Mile on the tough streets of Detroit.
I think that's where you're at today.
Tell me a little bit about what it was like growing up in
Detroit. Yeah, Jonathan, it's really good
to meet you. And I was fascinated.
My jaw was dropping hearing yourstory about being in Alaska.
(01:27):
So I think it might be tougher to be in Alaska than and the
mean streets of Detroit. But if you've ever seen Eight
Mile, the movie with Eminem, I went to high school with Eminem,
with Marshall for a year. And so that movie was pretty
much for how we grew up. It was literally betrayal,
drinking, drugs, fighting violence.
(01:48):
And I was, I was sitting at a a dinner near my hometown and I
actually saw one person I knew from high school.
And I I looked over and I said, whoa, there's someone I know
from high school. And he looked and he goes, yeah,
I'm the only one that's not deador in jail.
And I say that all the time, like most of my high school
friends are dead or in jail. And it's hard to get out of the
(02:08):
the rut when you're born in. So it's it's your nature versus
nurture is very hard. It's the hardest thing to get
out of. But I did and now I got to pay
it forward, John. And that's what I'm doing with
the heart of the life move. It's what I do with all the
books. And if I can do it, poor old kid
from Eight Mile Van Dyke in Michigan, anybody can do it.
But you just. It's hard.
Yeah, tell me what it would tellme that some of those lessons
(02:30):
that you learned, maybe what's someone of the biggest lessons
you learn growing up in a city like Detroit that still is
applicable to you today? Well man, so many just
consistency wins out. That's literally what at what I
learned this day. Life's gonna punch you in the
face and you have to be able to stand back up, count your
gratitude and keep going becauseI just I just left a meeting for
(02:54):
my IT company where where it's along standing client of mine and
the guy was so unhappy and just lashing out and you realize it's
not about you. So it's all about life is hard
and you got to be hard in the life.
And I'm, excuse me for the pun, but it is true.
And the more the best investmentyou'll ever make on yourself,
and I learned this late in light, late in life, is, is
(03:16):
building the man in the mirror or the woman in the mirror.
Because everything, if you love yourself and you know how to
emotionally regulate, everythingis downhill from.
There. So talk to me a little bit about
what were some of those first maybe businesses or entrepreneur
ideas that you tried out and howdid they go?
You're obviously successful now,which we'll talk about later,
(03:37):
but talk to me a little bit about what that looked like
early on, kind of teasing out your entrepreneur spirit.
Yeah, I started very early, but it was out of necessity.
It was that my parents were Alcoholics and drug addicts and
they were never home, so I had to get a job.
I lied and and said I was 13. When I was 12, I got a paper
route and immediately I took over a distressed paper route
(03:58):
where it was four blocks and there were 40 subscriptions
subscribers. And I immediately went door to
door and got it to 120 and they were doing a promotion where
they were paying, I can't remember, John, if it was 10 or
20 bucks per subscription, but Igot immediate, you know, $1000
hit and I was able to bankroll some money.
(04:20):
And I did that because I, I had to eat.
There was no food in our house. So it's amazing how when you
know you have to do something, your back is going to say, well,
that you talk about life lessons, the body, us as humans
are extremely resilient at getting what we need, not what
we want, but what we need. You ever seen, you know, a
crackhead who, who, who has no money?
(04:41):
They they're resilient enough toget their drugs every single
day. Every day they'll figure it out.
Tease people. I'm like, man, you're batting
1000, you've gotten through everything until this point.
So if you think you can't or youthink you can, you're right.
So my first, my first thing was a paper out and I did lie, but
I, I was out of necessity. Then I went door to door candy
sales and then I, I sold a papersubscriptions and then I, I'm
(05:05):
always been a hustler and it wasall I just literally, and this
is what it do to this day. So I work really, really hard.
I adjust a few variables and I keep growing and making it
better. So when I went and did door to
door sales, I, I learned what I did when I was knocking on doors
to build the, the paper route subscription and what I would
(05:26):
do, and this is this is a great advice for everybody listening.
Follow the directions of what you're told to do.
So there was that we had this whole script when we went door
to door selling candies and the script didn't make any sense to
me, but I would go to door to door and knock and like go to my
scanning though. No, no.
So I started reading the script,started making sales because it
was, it changed it from candy tohelping out youth.
(05:48):
And so I would say whatever yourboss, whatever your mentor,
whatever someone's doing that's winning, emulate that.
Put your own little twist on it,your own little tweak and make
it better and make it yours and go for it.
And I've done that today in my IT cybersecurity company all the
way through to my personal brand.
And I just what you measure getsbetter.
So I knew and if I did somethingso many times I could get an
(06:11):
outcome and then if I tweaked itand it went down, I would tweak
it the other way and then go back up.
So measure everything and reallyit's just this stuff is a
numbers game. Life is a numbers game.
I hate to say that you can slantthe numbers in your favor, but
the more the more hands you shake, the more money you make.
The more doors you knock, the more money you're going to make.
(06:32):
So you put some of this knowledge into a book called
Harder Than Life and Happier Than Life.
What? What prompted you to write that?
And what was that process like for you?
Well, it was a total accident, like everything in my life,
Starting my companies was an accident.
Being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Getting shot at was an accident.But there's always been God
looking out for me. I'm not a religious guy, but I'm
(06:54):
a very spiritual person and I believe that someone's always
been looking out for me. And what got me to write that is
I made a change in my life and not in 2019 that I said I want
to live a life without drinking.So I just said I'm going to live
a life of without alcohol. And when I did that, obviously
the pandemic hit. It was 2019, about 816 months
(07:15):
into it, pandemic hits. Everybody goes into day
drinking, working from home, andI had nothing to do.
So I said, I'm going to write a book about my life and I'm just
going to give it to my customersat NTM and just show them how I
got here and that we're going tomake all these changes, we're
going to revamp and we're going to get better.
And I wrote literally, I have the spiral notebooks where I
(07:38):
wrote everything in and I calledthe publisher and I dictated
everything to him and I had a book.
So when the book was ready, the owner of the publishing company
calls me. He's like, what are you going to
do with this? I read your book and I grew up
the same way. And he said, what are you going
to do with this? I said, I'm just going to give
it away to my customers. And he said, no, no, no, no,
this is going to be a best seller, which it was.
And I but he says you got to start a podcast.
(07:59):
Like I don't know what that is. I don't know what to do with
that. Is that hard?
So I did it and I love it. And here I am today.
But I will tell you, you asked me how the process was like, it
was hard. It was very cathartic.
I mean, it starts off the first sentence is, is, is about me
having to empty, empty a jar of urine of my step drunken
stepfather. And so I did a lot of crying.
It was cathartic and it was healing, man, I love it.
(08:21):
And it was embarrassing thing atfirst, like holy smokes that I
just say that. My sister read it, who was nine
years older than me. She said, Kelly, this is all you
remember? And I was like, why it was
worse? And she said yes.
So but then I decided I wanted to be positive.
So I wrote Happier than Life after it and just said, this is
what I've done since then. And the next one will probably
be healthier than life. But AI keeps calling me.
(08:44):
So I might write a book about AI.
And you know, I'm so tired of people making things difficult.
I like to you like to optimize everything.
As you can hear, I'm the the business and human optimization
specialist. Give me the process, let me make
it better, and I'm going to giveit back to the world because I
don't require much. So along the way, you started a
(09:07):
technology company and now you're involved, I think, with
prompts dot AI. Talk to me a little bit about
where you think AI is AT and maybe where it's going.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
Jonathan, I, I wanted to spell something right off the bat.
It is. I interviewed the Microsoft on
the Microsoft executive. She said 30 million jobs.
No, she said yeah, 30 million jobs are going to be displaced.
That's what she said. And I said I don't think that
(09:27):
they're going to be displaced. I think they're going to be
changed because in 1946 to 10 jobs that we have today didn't
exist. So I'm going to tell you right
now that I believe a high is going to enhance us, not replace
us. So to your listeners, please
don't be afraid of AI. But if you're using it to do
your job to, to do your job for you, then be afraid.
(09:49):
But if you're doing it, if you're using AI to enhance and
make it better, than kudos to you.
So you'll hear if you were in social media, you hear it's all
about prompts I and which is funny because we partnered with
a company called Proms dot AI and it's so early on in this
platform that word stop me if you've heard it.
We're optimizing it to make it easily digestible for every
(10:11):
business and every human becauseit was such a crazy concept.
What they did is they they got every single LLM.
So think of every AI tool. It's in this thing, so the ones
that people are familiar with, ChatGPT, Gronk, Googles,
whatever the name of theirs are,and you can get them all in
there because a lot of times people are flipping between the
LMS and it's all in here and youcan grab and piece which ones
(10:35):
you want. It's like Ford, GM and Chrysler
all working together and I don'tthink these AI guys wanted to do
this. So the moral stories, what am I
seeing? Anything formulaic is going to
be AI. So, but what you can't create is
the creativity. So go in there and use it as
your thought partner. So every speech that I write,
(10:56):
every business decision that I make, one of the things that I
use, I'm buying IT companies left and right.
I take the finances and I promptit and say, what am I missing
here? What questions should I be
asking? So instead, instead of having to
pay my lawyer and my CPA hundreds of thousands of
dollars, it's done in 5 seconds for me and says do not touch the
(11:16):
steal. And I've programmed in the
parameters of what I want. So think of that.
It's not doing my job, it's justmaking me be able to go and
analyze more companies faster. So it's, it's helping you do
your job faster, which is a problem with the United States.
We, some people tend to be a little lazy.
(11:37):
Some people just want status quoand they want their job to be
easier. No, no, no, no.
You're going to be expected coming from an entrepreneur.
I'm going to expect my employeesto two to 10X their output
because what used to take a day or hours or days takes minutes.
So what do you, what are your thoughts on, you know, I think
it sounds like you have, you know, you came from nothing.
(12:00):
You're very successful now. Sometimes I think people that
are getting out of college, theywant to be the CEO day 2 on the
job, making, you know, $400,000 a year.
What's your advice to kind of the new up and coming young
generation as they're trying to aspire to be entrepreneurs?
My goodness, so I have a 16 yearold daughter and the number one
thing is, is love yourself. Learn about yourself, put your
(12:24):
phone down, pay attention to theworld, talk to people, question
everything you know, because you're being constantly
bombarded with an algorithm that's trying to tell you that
you're right. And I got a news flash.
I'm going to be 50 years old this year.
The old, the older I got, the less I realized I was right
about anything. And as you get older, you
realize it doesn't matter. So look in the mirror, learn
(12:46):
emotional intelligence and how you do that is just taking the
power of the pause because I gota news flash for you.
We're going to be triggered. You're going to be somebody is
going to not like you. Somebody is going to be wrong to
you and you got to be equipped like, Oh my God, it was wronged.
This next generation is coming up soft.
And so I would say get tough, love yourself, raise your
(13:09):
standards, but work on yourself because those skills will
translate to anything because adversity is here, it just left
or it's on its way. So be used to it and be
comfortable facing adversity andkeep going through it.
And, and I would say be the Buffalo, just keep going cuz in
your Buffalo and you go into thestorm, the storm's coming at
you. You're in a lot less of the
(13:30):
times. Just get mentally and physically
tough and, and the easiest way to do it is to go to the gym.
You see, I'm, I work out a lot. Go to the gym because if you
could do that consistently, you keep the promises to yourself,
you'll keep the promises to everybody else.
And it makes you physically strong, makes you mentally fit,
which gives you every tool you need to win in this world.
So one of the companies you haveis National Technology
(13:52):
Management. Tell folks what that what that
is and what led you to start thecompany.
I know that you have a number ofdifferent things you're doing,
but that seems to be a pretty successful one.
Talk to me a little bit about that.
Before we go there, I want to you keep calling me successful
and I want people to understand what my definition of success
is. Yes, I have a few dollars.
Yes, I have some homes. Yes, I have some cars.
(14:13):
That does not what makes me successful.
I wake up every morning and I love the person in the mirror.
I'm at peace in my heart and I wake up and I'm absolutely fired
up to live every single day. I believe our Founding fathers
got our Bill of Rights wrong, that we all have the inalienable
rights to life, liberty, and thepursuit of happiness.
I believe it is the pursuit of life, the pursuit of liberty,
(14:37):
freedom and the pursuit of happiness.
Because there's so many people walking around here.
They're alive, but they're dead inside.
They're not. They're free physically, but
emotionally, they're trapped in their head.
So I want to employ your listeners and my fans to
understand that it is a peacefulheart that makes me successful,
not my bank account. And that would be for all those
(14:58):
children. They're all those kids that are
coming out of high school and college now that you cannot take
away. And it exudes off of me.
If you ever meet me, you'll see the energy, you'll see the
happiness. So back to national Technology
management, what was the question again?
Well, that LED you to start thatcompany in the 1st place.
Tell me the story behind it. Oh, it's such a good story.
You know, it's funny I told you earlier, I, I, I alluded to
(15:20):
everything happens for me and not to me.
And I've just been in the right place at the right time.
I was at a gal I was working fora so I'm old enough, John, that
I sold companies their first ever Internet connection and
people were like, what do I needthis Internet for?
And it's so crazy to tell peopleI lived in a time before the
Internet and where we did spreadsheets and you did, you
(15:40):
know, you're the pink callback for forms.
And it was, it was just crazy. And then I'd sell Internet and
we were selling Internet T ones for $2100.
Now you can get gig speeds for ahundred $100.
Oh, I was selling that and I wasat a golf outing with a bunch of
(16:01):
people in the telecom space And the, and I'm sitting here
talking to this guy. They team me up with a guy who
was on his phone the entire timeand I'm like, what do you do?
And he's like, I'm a broker for all this.
And he's like, I'm like, what does that mean?
He's like, well, you sell one company, I sell them all.
I was like, wow. And he's like, let me start.
Let me help you. And you know, I always tell
(16:22):
people you figure out the what and the why, what you want to do
and why you want to do it. The how usually appears I knew I
wanted to be start a business and then this Angel appeared on
a golf tee, the tee box and helpme start my business, which was
called Kelly Communications, which later after some evolving
and I was sitting doing a strength with a SWOT analysis
(16:44):
and I decided I said I'm this successful brokerage or agent
telecom consultant, so to speak,who can beat me and I figured
out that an IT integrator could beat me.
So I set out to build that company and turns out I was
about 10 years ahead of everybody else because I did the
voice over, IPI did the cyber security way ahead of everybody
(17:07):
else. And I learned that sometimes as
you can use the Myspace, it's better to be Facebook than
Myspace. Sometimes it's better to be the
second person in the market. So obviously nobody knows
Myspace. That was the first Facebook.
And then we all heard Uber, but Lyft kind of get there, let
somebody else do the heavy lifting and come in behind
(17:28):
because man, I'm telling you, wewent through some VoIP voice
over IP struggles like it wasn'tlike it is now.
And then when we used to sell T ones, 1.54 megabits per second,
which all our houses are at least 1000 now, you could
couldn't do what we do today. So how did I was in the right
place at the right time, but I was available.
(17:50):
You know, you have to createspace.
I wasn't too busy being busy. So I had space to listen and God
gave you 2 ears and one mouth for a reason.
Talk less than you listen, whichis hard for me to say because
I'm on a podcast. So and then I just kept evolving
and evolving. And now we're going to, we're
going to go down this AI path because I see our space changing
(18:12):
overnight. I mean, literally I've, we've
been using computers to fix computers for over 10 years.
We actually been using automation so much that we've
broke servers fixing computers. I just love to tinker.
And do you know, I say this all the time, impossible only
describes a degree of difficulty.
It creates a lot of Gray hairs and and lines in my face, but
(18:33):
man is it fun. So one of the things you alluded
to or said is you have faith anda spiritual aspect of yourself.
How, how important of a role is that played into who you've
become today? Well, it's growing, I'll be
honest with you. Faith over fear.
Both faith and fear both believein something in the future.
Why not feed the +1, which is faith.
(18:56):
I've I've been growing up in where I did.
I told you I've been shot at, I've had guns in my face, I've
been stabbed, I've been run over, I've been beat up.
And every time that some near death experience happened, like
why am I still here? And I keep doing good and we're
big, big, big in a charity doinga big charitable thing that I do
(19:16):
every single year this Sunday. And I'm here for a reason.
So every time that I, I feel like I'm down and out and, and
it has happened, man, I, I feel like I'm lucky and I'm happy,
but there's times where just theworld seems against me.
I slow down, I breathe, I ask God what what he wants me to do
right now. And the more than not, he just
(19:37):
says, relax, I got you. And, and I do, I do talk to God
or source or energy. There's something out there
guiding us, John. And it just keeps me going
everyday, man. And, and, and if I sit back and
I asked for something very specific, you don't believe that
there's somebody working. I implore the listeners to sit
(19:57):
for a second, get real, real, real quiet.
Get still and ask for something.Say God and be very specific
about your ask and then sit and wait and watch.
And I'm going to guarantee you you'll get that.
Now if you sit back and give me $1,000,000.
Say, give me the opportunity to make $1,000,000 and then watch
(20:17):
things collude to make you happy.
And I see it every time. I'm very specific about things
and God keeps going and, and, and delivering in ways.
It's probably energy that does that because I'm creating energy
and I'm it's the karmic law. Put what you put out, you get
back. So I put out good vibes and good
things come back to me, man. And I tell you just life is
really, really good. It's challenging, difficult.
(20:40):
I'm in the middle of doing. I challenge myself.
This year I'm 5th, I'm going to be 50, so I want to do 500
workouts and I'm done here. I got to go do my second one of
the day, which is 367 workouts for this year.
I didn't think that went throughvery much.
I never said I was smart. I just said.
So there's probably, you know, most of us have somebody that
we've maybe looked up to or beena hero in their lives.
(21:02):
Who's been that person for you either recently or in the past?
Wow. Tough question.
Up until very recently, it was me against the world.
That's how I felt. And that's why I implore all the
youth to work on themselves. Because thoughts are magical
lies. I And now I've met you and your
new friend and you can learn from everybody, but this is the
beauty part about the, about the, this world we live in now
(21:25):
with, with social media and withYouTube and with the Internet is
anybody can be your mentor. So one of my biggest mentors is
Ed Mylett. I've had the opportunity to meet
him several times. We actually share podcast
producers and I try to emulate myself after him.
We look a lot alike. We look at the world alike, but
I didn't know him before a year ago.
So I he was still a hero of mine.
(21:45):
So but the beauty part is you can have different heroes from
you can take different pieces ofof, of everybody.
I wish I could say it was my dad.
My dad died very young, was never around.
It's funny. If you heal, you look back at
all the abuse, the quote UN quote abuse I suffered and I
realize they were my mother and my stepfather were just making
(22:06):
me tough, you know, and and that's I find myself using some
of their sayings to this day. And but it took a lot of healing
to get there. See, I always try to tell people
to look at their parents, but myparents were never around, so I
don't that's a hard one for me to say, but Ed seems to be one
of them. But I have a lot of good people
in my life being in this space. I have a friend, Rudy
(22:28):
Ricksteins, who's a who's one ofthe best business coaches in the
country. And make yourself available and
give be of value and be a servant leader.
Give back. And it's amazing who will come
and help you. And The funny thing about it is
what people don't realize. If you ask for help, most people
will help you. I've I've asked big people to
give me advice. I just got off of a coaching
call with someone helping me with a speech that had that
(22:50):
charges thousands and thousands of dollars.
I'm like sure I'll help you so. You never know.
I'm a big reader, John. That's I, I think I, I, I'm
alerted all. So I read some of the people
that I, that I admire are like Martin Luther King, some of the
big people who've really made massive change in the world,
(23:11):
Winston Churchill, I don't know they, they, they were dead
before I was born, but I, I admire them from afar.
It's awesome. So let's circle back a little
bit to the AI because I think this is fascinating.
You partner with prompts dot AI.You know, during COVID,
everybody left the office buildings, maybe very, you know,
less than 50% has returned. What do you think the future of
(23:33):
Workspace or just, you know, companies with lots of employees
is going to look like? I'm super stoked because I think
we're going to optimize the world.
I believe we are coming into another, let's just call it like
industrial revolution, but it's going to be a technical
revolution. But it also opens up for some of
the Thoris things. I think that World War 3 won't
(23:55):
look like World War One and World War 2.
It's going to be a cyber battle.What do I think works going to
look like? I think, again, I, I alluded to
it, you're going to be expected to output more.
The inputs are going to be actually less, meaning it's not
like you're working anymore. You're still going to work your
8 hours, but you're going to have to do more in those eight
(24:16):
hours. And what we're going to be able
to do is amazing. There are going to be some
displaced businesses, but there were displaced businesses back
in the day. One of the first things that we
did when I started selling high bandwidth is we displaced toll
booths. I mean, I, I don't know your
age, but we used to go and thereyou'd pull up to a toll booth
(24:36):
and you'd give the toll operatormoney.
Now you just pull up, throw, swipe your credit card and
they're they're unmanned becausethey're all that Internet
connections. We were, we were the first to do
that 20 years ago, But that doesn't mean the toll worker
doesn't have a job. Now the toll workers delivering
your freaking DoorDash, you know, I mean, so those jobs are
going to be changed, but they'restill going to be jobs, you
(24:59):
know, and you're going to see self driving cars.
So maybe Uber and Lyft drivers are not going to, but they'll be
something else. So just be of value, have
positive mental attitude and good things will happen.
But it's going to get the peoplethat want things to stay the
same are we're in the next 18 months are going to have a
shock. And it might not even be 18
(25:20):
months. It might be a year.
So they're going to be like, Oh my goodness, they're this day
eyes out to get us. It's not.
It's here to help us. It's going to freaking be
amazing. Embrace it.
If you're doing nothing now, youbetter start open up.
All these platforms are free. Get in there and start asking it
(25:40):
questions. My latest thing is I have the
the platforms interview me. I'll say here's what I need
done. Act as my business coach.
Interview me for more context, no more than five questions and
then give me the answer. And it does it.
It keep trying to spoof it. I keep trying to mess it up and
it just keeps delivering and delivering and delivering.
(26:01):
So if nothing else, people lead in lean into it and we've since
really crazy marketing companiesas we know it.
And I know that that's part of you are going to be the ones
that are really providing value are going to make it.
The ones that are just going through the motions aren't
because you're going to be able to use AI to do a lot of these
things. However, what I love about this
(26:22):
is it's going to level the playing field.
We're all going to have access to this beautiful tool.
It's who's going to step up and do it.
It's like it's I, I liken it to the gym, John, like we all can
go to the gym, but most don't. So the people that do that look
good. They live longer and they're,
and they have a lot of confidence.
The people that lean into this AI are going to be successful.
Don't be afraid of it. So let's say there's an 18 year
(26:46):
old young adult listening to this.
Maybe they got 1000 bucks. They have no idea what to do.
What are the three things they should do to maybe spur them
into a place to becoming a entrepreneur themselves?
That's such a good question. I would go to Quid and I would
prompt the AI and ask him that. It's usually not going to be out
of the you want to take that 1000 bucks and get it working
(27:08):
for you and figure out what you're passionate about and go
develop a process and a platformfor that and go sell it to other
people. It's so funny you're saying this
because I, I was sitting down inthe prompts platform today with
my 16 year old daughter and I was like, baby, you got to learn
this. If you're not going to do
anything, I want you to learn how to prompt AI because that's
(27:30):
all you ever hear if you scroll through social media, The
prompt, use this prompt. Use it once you figure out the
method and it's like talking to A5 year old.
It's just think of processes in your head.
If you, if you, you have to walkthe AI through the process and
then tell it what you want. You can't just so many people go
in there and make this better, make this better.
So 1000 bucks you'd want to start.
(27:53):
We want to figure out a method to, to double and triple that
fast. And what I would do is be
leaning into this AI as hard as I could and fill a gap that's
not out there right now, which there's a lot of them.
I just got a, that's the call that you saw me that taking was
I had a friend call me and say, Hey, he owns a bunch of disaster
restoration companies. Like, hey, he's like, you need
(28:14):
to get in the disaster restoration space.
He's like, I just heard of sevenbreaches just just happened
where money was intercepted. So go find an area that's
underserved, take that 1000 bucks, learn everything you can,
and double and triple and quadruple it.
But I would also go back to whatI said double down on absolutely
work on yourself. Invest in yourself, invest in
(28:36):
your emotional intelligence, invest in yourself love kids
nowadays at 18, you can look John and see exactly if you're
liked. They get all of their self worth
from social media. My daughter, she gets exiled out
of group chat. She knows if they like her or
not. It's a different world than I
grew up in. You had to gas if people like
(28:57):
you now you know because you're you're exiled out of group chat.
Love yourself, get everything that you need, everything that
you require in your in your life.
You can supply yourself, get comfortable with that and you'll
be stoppable. The more you can be alone and
love yourself, the more you can do anything in this world.
So I know I keep coming back to that because I can sit and I can
(29:20):
be comfortable with myself and that quietness.
Something will come to me. God will send a message, the
energy, the source, something will send a message like that
just happened to me with that download for this disaster
restoration companies. But you got to be still gross.
It can't catch you. I used to be busy when I used to
back in my party and is running around everywhere so busy
nothing could catch me. And then once I got still and I
(29:42):
was silent and I was in solitude.
That's Mike, what I call my 3 s s.
I wrote about it in a Happier than Life book.
Those three things, stillness, silence and solitude will answer
any question. Most of us can't do that, kids.
18 year old kid going to grab their phone and look down.
I, I take phone vacations. You want to hack, take a phone
(30:03):
vacation for 24 hours, turn yourphone off and don't look at it.
I do it for I did it for 11 dayslast year.
I'm going to do it for seven days every single year within
Christmas and New Year's, I shutmy phone off and I put it away.
It was a shock because you don'trealize how much you need your
phone. But then I just after three days
I. Loved it.
So I really appreciate you joining me. 30 minutes here has
(30:26):
gone by in a flash, folks, for listening in, I'm going to put
the links to Kelly's book in thedescription.
Harder than life, happier than Life.
Before we head off, Kelly, you have any last minute thoughts?
I'm a big I have this up in my in my bathroom.
I I love the Ram Dass quote of love everybody and tell the
truth. The truth will always set you
free and if you're love yourselfenough to always tell the truth,
(30:48):
you won't have any chaos in yourlife.
It's weak people that need to lie.
Just love everybody, tell the truth, and be comfortable being
uncomfortable. Well, thanks so much for joining
us, folks. Again, we'll put all the links
in the description and go check them out.
Hope you have a great rest of your day, everybody that's
listening. And Kelly, thanks so much for
joining. Us Thanks for having me, my
friend.
Welcome back to Stories Worth Hearing.
I'm John Quick, your host. Today I'm joined by Kelly
Siegel, the CEO of National Technology Management and the
best selling author of Harder than Life and Happier than Life.
Kelly grew up on 7 Mile in Detroit, faced adversity head
on, and went on to build a multi$1,000,000 tech firm.
Now he's leading a national movement to flip the script on
(00:21):
AI in the workplace. Instead of seeing AI as a
threat, Kelly shows us how it can make employees more valuable
than ever. Through his partnership with
Prompts dot AI, he's helping fortune level companies bring no
code, drag and drop AI tools to every department, boosting
productivity, cutting costs, andprotecting company data.
(00:42):
In this conversation, we'll talkabout Kelly's personal journey,
how he overcame hardship, why hebelieves AI is a career
accelerator, and what every employee and leader can do right
now to thrive in the AI driven economy.
So with that, let's welcome Kelly Siegel to the show.
Kelly, thank you so much for joining us.
This will be really fun to kind of hear a little bit about your
story, where you grew up, a bunch of the businesses that
(01:04):
you're involved in which I thinksome are very cutting edge.
But first I got to ask the question.
But I read that you grew up either on Eight Mile or near 8
Mile on the tough streets of Detroit.
I think that's where you're at today.
Tell me a little bit about what it was like growing up in
Detroit. Yeah, Jonathan, it's really good
to meet you. And I was fascinated.
My jaw was dropping hearing yourstory about being in Alaska.
(01:27):
So I think it might be tougher to be in Alaska than and the
mean streets of Detroit. But if you've ever seen Eight
Mile, the movie with Eminem, I went to high school with Eminem,
with Marshall for a year. And so that movie was pretty
much for how we grew up. It was literally betrayal,
drinking, drugs, fighting violence.
(01:48):
And I was, I was sitting at a a dinner near my hometown and I
actually saw one person I knew from high school.
And I I looked over and I said, whoa, there's someone I know
from high school. And he looked and he goes, yeah,
I'm the only one that's not deador in jail.
And I say that all the time, like most of my high school
friends are dead or in jail. And it's hard to get out of the
(02:08):
the rut when you're born in. So it's it's your nature versus
nurture is very hard. It's the hardest thing to get
out of. But I did and now I got to pay
it forward, John. And that's what I'm doing with
the heart of the life move. It's what I do with all the
books. And if I can do it, poor old kid
from Eight Mile Van Dyke in Michigan, anybody can do it.
But you just. It's hard.
Yeah, tell me what it would tellme that some of those lessons
(02:30):
that you learned, maybe what's someone of the biggest lessons
you learn growing up in a city like Detroit that still is
applicable to you today? Well man, so many just
consistency wins out. That's literally what at what I
learned this day. Life's gonna punch you in the
face and you have to be able to stand back up, count your
gratitude and keep going becauseI just I just left a meeting for
(02:54):
my IT company where where it's along standing client of mine and
the guy was so unhappy and just lashing out and you realize it's
not about you. So it's all about life is hard
and you got to be hard in the life.
And I'm, excuse me for the pun, but it is true.
And the more the best investmentyou'll ever make on yourself,
and I learned this late in light, late in life, is, is
(03:16):
building the man in the mirror or the woman in the mirror.
Because everything, if you love yourself and you know how to
emotionally regulate, everythingis downhill from.
There. So talk to me a little bit about
what were some of those first maybe businesses or entrepreneur
ideas that you tried out and howdid they go?
You're obviously successful now,which we'll talk about later,
(03:37):
but talk to me a little bit about what that looked like
early on, kind of teasing out your entrepreneur spirit.
Yeah, I started very early, but it was out of necessity.
It was that my parents were Alcoholics and drug addicts and
they were never home, so I had to get a job.
I lied and and said I was 13. When I was 12, I got a paper
route and immediately I took over a distressed paper route
(03:58):
where it was four blocks and there were 40 subscriptions
subscribers. And I immediately went door to
door and got it to 120 and they were doing a promotion where
they were paying, I can't remember, John, if it was 10 or
20 bucks per subscription, but Igot immediate, you know, $1000
hit and I was able to bankroll some money.
(04:20):
And I did that because I, I had to eat.
There was no food in our house. So it's amazing how when you
know you have to do something, your back is going to say, well,
that you talk about life lessons, the body, us as humans
are extremely resilient at getting what we need, not what
we want, but what we need. You ever seen, you know, a
crackhead who, who, who has no money?
(04:41):
They they're resilient enough toget their drugs every single
day. Every day they'll figure it out.
Tease people. I'm like, man, you're batting
1000, you've gotten through everything until this point.
So if you think you can't or youthink you can, you're right.
So my first, my first thing was a paper out and I did lie, but
I, I was out of necessity. Then I went door to door candy
sales and then I, I sold a papersubscriptions and then I, I'm
(05:05):
always been a hustler and it wasall I just literally, and this
is what it do to this day. So I work really, really hard.
I adjust a few variables and I keep growing and making it
better. So when I went and did door to
door sales, I, I learned what I did when I was knocking on doors
to build the, the paper route subscription and what I would
(05:26):
do, and this is this is a great advice for everybody listening.
Follow the directions of what you're told to do.
So there was that we had this whole script when we went door
to door selling candies and the script didn't make any sense to
me, but I would go to door to door and knock and like go to my
scanning though. No, no.
So I started reading the script,started making sales because it
was, it changed it from candy tohelping out youth.
(05:48):
And so I would say whatever yourboss, whatever your mentor,
whatever someone's doing that's winning, emulate that.
Put your own little twist on it,your own little tweak and make
it better and make it yours and go for it.
And I've done that today in my IT cybersecurity company all the
way through to my personal brand.
And I just what you measure getsbetter.
So I knew and if I did somethingso many times I could get an
(06:11):
outcome and then if I tweaked itand it went down, I would tweak
it the other way and then go back up.
So measure everything and reallyit's just this stuff is a
numbers game. Life is a numbers game.
I hate to say that you can slantthe numbers in your favor, but
the more the more hands you shake, the more money you make.
The more doors you knock, the more money you're going to make.
(06:32):
So you put some of this knowledge into a book called
Harder Than Life and Happier Than Life.
What? What prompted you to write that?
And what was that process like for you?
Well, it was a total accident, like everything in my life,
Starting my companies was an accident.
Being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Getting shot at was an accident.But there's always been God
looking out for me. I'm not a religious guy, but I'm
(06:54):
a very spiritual person and I believe that someone's always
been looking out for me. And what got me to write that is
I made a change in my life and not in 2019 that I said I want
to live a life without drinking.So I just said I'm going to live
a life of without alcohol. And when I did that, obviously
the pandemic hit. It was 2019, about 816 months
(07:15):
into it, pandemic hits. Everybody goes into day
drinking, working from home, andI had nothing to do.
So I said, I'm going to write a book about my life and I'm just
going to give it to my customersat NTM and just show them how I
got here and that we're going tomake all these changes, we're
going to revamp and we're going to get better.
And I wrote literally, I have the spiral notebooks where I
(07:38):
wrote everything in and I calledthe publisher and I dictated
everything to him and I had a book.
So when the book was ready, the owner of the publishing company
calls me. He's like, what are you going to
do with this? I read your book and I grew up
the same way. And he said, what are you going
to do with this? I said, I'm just going to give
it away to my customers. And he said, no, no, no, no,
this is going to be a best seller, which it was.
And I but he says you got to start a podcast.
(07:59):
Like I don't know what that is. I don't know what to do with
that. Is that hard?
So I did it and I love it. And here I am today.
But I will tell you, you asked me how the process was like, it
was hard. It was very cathartic.
I mean, it starts off the first sentence is, is, is about me
having to empty, empty a jar of urine of my step drunken
stepfather. And so I did a lot of crying.
It was cathartic and it was healing, man, I love it.
(08:21):
And it was embarrassing thing atfirst, like holy smokes that I
just say that. My sister read it, who was nine
years older than me. She said, Kelly, this is all you
remember? And I was like, why it was
worse? And she said yes.
So but then I decided I wanted to be positive.
So I wrote Happier than Life after it and just said, this is
what I've done since then. And the next one will probably
be healthier than life. But AI keeps calling me.
(08:44):
So I might write a book about AI.
And you know, I'm so tired of people making things difficult.
I like to you like to optimize everything.
As you can hear, I'm the the business and human optimization
specialist. Give me the process, let me make
it better, and I'm going to giveit back to the world because I
don't require much. So along the way, you started a
(09:07):
technology company and now you're involved, I think, with
prompts dot AI. Talk to me a little bit about
where you think AI is AT and maybe where it's going.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
Jonathan, I, I wanted to spell something right off the bat.
It is. I interviewed the Microsoft on
the Microsoft executive. She said 30 million jobs.
No, she said yeah, 30 million jobs are going to be displaced.
That's what she said. And I said I don't think that
(09:27):
they're going to be displaced. I think they're going to be
changed because in 1946 to 10 jobs that we have today didn't
exist. So I'm going to tell you right
now that I believe a high is going to enhance us, not replace
us. So to your listeners, please
don't be afraid of AI. But if you're using it to do
your job to, to do your job for you, then be afraid.
(09:49):
But if you're doing it, if you're using AI to enhance and
make it better, than kudos to you.
So you'll hear if you were in social media, you hear it's all
about prompts I and which is funny because we partnered with
a company called Proms dot AI and it's so early on in this
platform that word stop me if you've heard it.
We're optimizing it to make it easily digestible for every
(10:11):
business and every human becauseit was such a crazy concept.
What they did is they they got every single LLM.
So think of every AI tool. It's in this thing, so the ones
that people are familiar with, ChatGPT, Gronk, Googles,
whatever the name of theirs are,and you can get them all in
there because a lot of times people are flipping between the
LMS and it's all in here and youcan grab and piece which ones
(10:35):
you want. It's like Ford, GM and Chrysler
all working together and I don'tthink these AI guys wanted to do
this. So the moral stories, what am I
seeing? Anything formulaic is going to
be AI. So, but what you can't create is
the creativity. So go in there and use it as
your thought partner. So every speech that I write,
(10:56):
every business decision that I make, one of the things that I
use, I'm buying IT companies left and right.
I take the finances and I promptit and say, what am I missing
here? What questions should I be
asking? So instead, instead of having to
pay my lawyer and my CPA hundreds of thousands of
dollars, it's done in 5 seconds for me and says do not touch the
(11:16):
steal. And I've programmed in the
parameters of what I want. So think of that.
It's not doing my job, it's justmaking me be able to go and
analyze more companies faster. So it's, it's helping you do
your job faster, which is a problem with the United States.
We, some people tend to be a little lazy.
(11:37):
Some people just want status quoand they want their job to be
easier. No, no, no, no.
You're going to be expected coming from an entrepreneur.
I'm going to expect my employeesto two to 10X their output
because what used to take a day or hours or days takes minutes.
So what do you, what are your thoughts on, you know, I think
it sounds like you have, you know, you came from nothing.
(12:00):
You're very successful now. Sometimes I think people that
are getting out of college, theywant to be the CEO day 2 on the
job, making, you know, $400,000 a year.
What's your advice to kind of the new up and coming young
generation as they're trying to aspire to be entrepreneurs?
My goodness, so I have a 16 yearold daughter and the number one
thing is, is love yourself. Learn about yourself, put your
(12:24):
phone down, pay attention to theworld, talk to people, question
everything you know, because you're being constantly
bombarded with an algorithm that's trying to tell you that
you're right. And I got a news flash.
I'm going to be 50 years old this year.
The old, the older I got, the less I realized I was right
about anything. And as you get older, you
realize it doesn't matter. So look in the mirror, learn
(12:46):
emotional intelligence and how you do that is just taking the
power of the pause because I gota news flash for you.
We're going to be triggered. You're going to be somebody is
going to not like you. Somebody is going to be wrong to
you and you got to be equipped like, Oh my God, it was wronged.
This next generation is coming up soft.
And so I would say get tough, love yourself, raise your
(13:09):
standards, but work on yourself because those skills will
translate to anything because adversity is here, it just left
or it's on its way. So be used to it and be
comfortable facing adversity andkeep going through it.
And, and I would say be the Buffalo, just keep going cuz in
your Buffalo and you go into thestorm, the storm's coming at
you. You're in a lot less of the
(13:30):
times. Just get mentally and physically
tough and, and the easiest way to do it is to go to the gym.
You see, I'm, I work out a lot. Go to the gym because if you
could do that consistently, you keep the promises to yourself,
you'll keep the promises to everybody else.
And it makes you physically strong, makes you mentally fit,
which gives you every tool you need to win in this world.
So one of the companies you haveis National Technology
(13:52):
Management. Tell folks what that what that
is and what led you to start thecompany.
I know that you have a number ofdifferent things you're doing,
but that seems to be a pretty successful one.
Talk to me a little bit about that.
Before we go there, I want to you keep calling me successful
and I want people to understand what my definition of success
is. Yes, I have a few dollars.
Yes, I have some homes. Yes, I have some cars.
(14:13):
That does not what makes me successful.
I wake up every morning and I love the person in the mirror.
I'm at peace in my heart and I wake up and I'm absolutely fired
up to live every single day. I believe our Founding fathers
got our Bill of Rights wrong, that we all have the inalienable
rights to life, liberty, and thepursuit of happiness.
I believe it is the pursuit of life, the pursuit of liberty,
(14:37):
freedom and the pursuit of happiness.
Because there's so many people walking around here.
They're alive, but they're dead inside.
They're not. They're free physically, but
emotionally, they're trapped in their head.
So I want to employ your listeners and my fans to
understand that it is a peacefulheart that makes me successful,
not my bank account. And that would be for all those
(14:58):
children. They're all those kids that are
coming out of high school and college now that you cannot take
away. And it exudes off of me.
If you ever meet me, you'll see the energy, you'll see the
happiness. So back to national Technology
management, what was the question again?
Well, that LED you to start thatcompany in the 1st place.
Tell me the story behind it. Oh, it's such a good story.
You know, it's funny I told you earlier, I, I, I alluded to
(15:20):
everything happens for me and not to me.
And I've just been in the right place at the right time.
I was at a gal I was working fora so I'm old enough, John, that
I sold companies their first ever Internet connection and
people were like, what do I needthis Internet for?
And it's so crazy to tell peopleI lived in a time before the
Internet and where we did spreadsheets and you did, you
(15:40):
know, you're the pink callback for forms.
And it was, it was just crazy. And then I'd sell Internet and
we were selling Internet T ones for $2100.
Now you can get gig speeds for ahundred $100.
Oh, I was selling that and I wasat a golf outing with a bunch of
(16:01):
people in the telecom space And the, and I'm sitting here
talking to this guy. They team me up with a guy who
was on his phone the entire timeand I'm like, what do you do?
And he's like, I'm a broker for all this.
And he's like, I'm like, what does that mean?
He's like, well, you sell one company, I sell them all.
I was like, wow. And he's like, let me start.
Let me help you. And you know, I always tell
(16:22):
people you figure out the what and the why, what you want to do
and why you want to do it. The how usually appears I knew I
wanted to be start a business and then this Angel appeared on
a golf tee, the tee box and helpme start my business, which was
called Kelly Communications, which later after some evolving
and I was sitting doing a strength with a SWOT analysis
(16:44):
and I decided I said I'm this successful brokerage or agent
telecom consultant, so to speak,who can beat me and I figured
out that an IT integrator could beat me.
So I set out to build that company and turns out I was
about 10 years ahead of everybody else because I did the
voice over, IPI did the cyber security way ahead of everybody
(17:07):
else. And I learned that sometimes as
you can use the Myspace, it's better to be Facebook than
Myspace. Sometimes it's better to be the
second person in the market. So obviously nobody knows
Myspace. That was the first Facebook.
And then we all heard Uber, but Lyft kind of get there, let
somebody else do the heavy lifting and come in behind
(17:28):
because man, I'm telling you, wewent through some VoIP voice
over IP struggles like it wasn'tlike it is now.
And then when we used to sell T ones, 1.54 megabits per second,
which all our houses are at least 1000 now, you could
couldn't do what we do today. So how did I was in the right
place at the right time, but I was available.
(17:50):
You know, you have to createspace.
I wasn't too busy being busy. So I had space to listen and God
gave you 2 ears and one mouth for a reason.
Talk less than you listen, whichis hard for me to say because
I'm on a podcast. So and then I just kept evolving
and evolving. And now we're going to, we're
going to go down this AI path because I see our space changing
(18:12):
overnight. I mean, literally I've, we've
been using computers to fix computers for over 10 years.
We actually been using automation so much that we've
broke servers fixing computers. I just love to tinker.
And do you know, I say this all the time, impossible only
describes a degree of difficulty.
It creates a lot of Gray hairs and and lines in my face, but
(18:33):
man is it fun. So one of the things you alluded
to or said is you have faith anda spiritual aspect of yourself.
How, how important of a role is that played into who you've
become today? Well, it's growing, I'll be
honest with you. Faith over fear.
Both faith and fear both believein something in the future.
Why not feed the +1, which is faith.
(18:56):
I've I've been growing up in where I did.
I told you I've been shot at, I've had guns in my face, I've
been stabbed, I've been run over, I've been beat up.
And every time that some near death experience happened, like
why am I still here? And I keep doing good and we're
big, big, big in a charity doinga big charitable thing that I do
(19:16):
every single year this Sunday. And I'm here for a reason.
So every time that I, I feel like I'm down and out and, and
it has happened, man, I, I feel like I'm lucky and I'm happy,
but there's times where just theworld seems against me.
I slow down, I breathe, I ask God what what he wants me to do
right now. And the more than not, he just
(19:37):
says, relax, I got you. And, and I do, I do talk to God
or source or energy. There's something out there
guiding us, John. And it just keeps me going
everyday, man. And, and, and if I sit back and
I asked for something very specific, you don't believe that
there's somebody working. I implore the listeners to sit
(19:57):
for a second, get real, real, real quiet.
Get still and ask for something.Say God and be very specific
about your ask and then sit and wait and watch.
And I'm going to guarantee you you'll get that.
Now if you sit back and give me $1,000,000.
Say, give me the opportunity to make $1,000,000 and then watch
(20:17):
things collude to make you happy.
And I see it every time. I'm very specific about things
and God keeps going and, and, and delivering in ways.
It's probably energy that does that because I'm creating energy
and I'm it's the karmic law. Put what you put out, you get
back. So I put out good vibes and good
things come back to me, man. And I tell you just life is
really, really good. It's challenging, difficult.
(20:40):
I'm in the middle of doing. I challenge myself.
This year I'm 5th, I'm going to be 50, so I want to do 500
workouts and I'm done here. I got to go do my second one of
the day, which is 367 workouts for this year.
I didn't think that went throughvery much.
I never said I was smart. I just said.
So there's probably, you know, most of us have somebody that
we've maybe looked up to or beena hero in their lives.
(21:02):
Who's been that person for you either recently or in the past?
Wow. Tough question.
Up until very recently, it was me against the world.
That's how I felt. And that's why I implore all the
youth to work on themselves. Because thoughts are magical
lies. I And now I've met you and your
new friend and you can learn from everybody, but this is the
beauty part about the, about the, this world we live in now
(21:25):
with, with social media and withYouTube and with the Internet is
anybody can be your mentor. So one of my biggest mentors is
Ed Mylett. I've had the opportunity to meet
him several times. We actually share podcast
producers and I try to emulate myself after him.
We look a lot alike. We look at the world alike, but
I didn't know him before a year ago.
So I he was still a hero of mine.
(21:45):
So but the beauty part is you can have different heroes from
you can take different pieces ofof, of everybody.
I wish I could say it was my dad.
My dad died very young, was never around.
It's funny. If you heal, you look back at
all the abuse, the quote UN quote abuse I suffered and I
realize they were my mother and my stepfather were just making
(22:06):
me tough, you know, and and that's I find myself using some
of their sayings to this day. And but it took a lot of healing
to get there. See, I always try to tell people
to look at their parents, but myparents were never around, so I
don't that's a hard one for me to say, but Ed seems to be one
of them. But I have a lot of good people
in my life being in this space. I have a friend, Rudy
(22:28):
Ricksteins, who's a who's one ofthe best business coaches in the
country. And make yourself available and
give be of value and be a servant leader.
Give back. And it's amazing who will come
and help you. And The funny thing about it is
what people don't realize. If you ask for help, most people
will help you. I've I've asked big people to
give me advice. I just got off of a coaching
call with someone helping me with a speech that had that
(22:50):
charges thousands and thousands of dollars.
I'm like sure I'll help you so. You never know.
I'm a big reader, John. That's I, I think I, I, I'm
alerted all. So I read some of the people
that I, that I admire are like Martin Luther King, some of the
big people who've really made massive change in the world,
(23:11):
Winston Churchill, I don't know they, they, they were dead
before I was born, but I, I admire them from afar.
It's awesome. So let's circle back a little
bit to the AI because I think this is fascinating.
You partner with prompts dot AI.You know, during COVID,
everybody left the office buildings, maybe very, you know,
less than 50% has returned. What do you think the future of
(23:33):
Workspace or just, you know, companies with lots of employees
is going to look like? I'm super stoked because I think
we're going to optimize the world.
I believe we are coming into another, let's just call it like
industrial revolution, but it's going to be a technical
revolution. But it also opens up for some of
the Thoris things. I think that World War 3 won't
(23:55):
look like World War One and World War 2.
It's going to be a cyber battle.What do I think works going to
look like? I think, again, I, I alluded to
it, you're going to be expected to output more.
The inputs are going to be actually less, meaning it's not
like you're working anymore. You're still going to work your
8 hours, but you're going to have to do more in those eight
(24:16):
hours. And what we're going to be able
to do is amazing. There are going to be some
displaced businesses, but there were displaced businesses back
in the day. One of the first things that we
did when I started selling high bandwidth is we displaced toll
booths. I mean, I, I don't know your
age, but we used to go and thereyou'd pull up to a toll booth
(24:36):
and you'd give the toll operatormoney.
Now you just pull up, throw, swipe your credit card and
they're they're unmanned becausethey're all that Internet
connections. We were, we were the first to do
that 20 years ago, But that doesn't mean the toll worker
doesn't have a job. Now the toll workers delivering
your freaking DoorDash, you know, I mean, so those jobs are
going to be changed, but they'restill going to be jobs, you
(24:59):
know, and you're going to see self driving cars.
So maybe Uber and Lyft drivers are not going to, but they'll be
something else. So just be of value, have
positive mental attitude and good things will happen.
But it's going to get the peoplethat want things to stay the
same are we're in the next 18 months are going to have a
shock. And it might not even be 18
(25:20):
months. It might be a year.
So they're going to be like, Oh my goodness, they're this day
eyes out to get us. It's not.
It's here to help us. It's going to freaking be
amazing. Embrace it.
If you're doing nothing now, youbetter start open up.
All these platforms are free. Get in there and start asking it
(25:40):
questions. My latest thing is I have the
the platforms interview me. I'll say here's what I need
done. Act as my business coach.
Interview me for more context, no more than five questions and
then give me the answer. And it does it.
It keep trying to spoof it. I keep trying to mess it up and
it just keeps delivering and delivering and delivering.
(26:01):
So if nothing else, people lead in lean into it and we've since
really crazy marketing companiesas we know it.
And I know that that's part of you are going to be the ones
that are really providing value are going to make it.
The ones that are just going through the motions aren't
because you're going to be able to use AI to do a lot of these
things. However, what I love about this
(26:22):
is it's going to level the playing field.
We're all going to have access to this beautiful tool.
It's who's going to step up and do it.
It's like it's I, I liken it to the gym, John, like we all can
go to the gym, but most don't. So the people that do that look
good. They live longer and they're,
and they have a lot of confidence.
The people that lean into this AI are going to be successful.
Don't be afraid of it. So let's say there's an 18 year
(26:46):
old young adult listening to this.
Maybe they got 1000 bucks. They have no idea what to do.
What are the three things they should do to maybe spur them
into a place to becoming a entrepreneur themselves?
That's such a good question. I would go to Quid and I would
prompt the AI and ask him that. It's usually not going to be out
of the you want to take that 1000 bucks and get it working
(27:08):
for you and figure out what you're passionate about and go
develop a process and a platformfor that and go sell it to other
people. It's so funny you're saying this
because I, I was sitting down inthe prompts platform today with
my 16 year old daughter and I was like, baby, you got to learn
this. If you're not going to do
anything, I want you to learn how to prompt AI because that's
(27:30):
all you ever hear if you scroll through social media, The
prompt, use this prompt. Use it once you figure out the
method and it's like talking to A5 year old.
It's just think of processes in your head.
If you, if you, you have to walkthe AI through the process and
then tell it what you want. You can't just so many people go
in there and make this better, make this better.
So 1000 bucks you'd want to start.
(27:53):
We want to figure out a method to, to double and triple that
fast. And what I would do is be
leaning into this AI as hard as I could and fill a gap that's
not out there right now, which there's a lot of them.
I just got a, that's the call that you saw me that taking was
I had a friend call me and say, Hey, he owns a bunch of disaster
restoration companies. Like, hey, he's like, you need
(28:14):
to get in the disaster restoration space.
He's like, I just heard of sevenbreaches just just happened
where money was intercepted. So go find an area that's
underserved, take that 1000 bucks, learn everything you can,
and double and triple and quadruple it.
But I would also go back to whatI said double down on absolutely
work on yourself. Invest in yourself, invest in
(28:36):
your emotional intelligence, invest in yourself love kids
nowadays at 18, you can look John and see exactly if you're
liked. They get all of their self worth
from social media. My daughter, she gets exiled out
of group chat. She knows if they like her or
not. It's a different world than I
grew up in. You had to gas if people like
(28:57):
you now you know because you're you're exiled out of group chat.
Love yourself, get everything that you need, everything that
you require in your in your life.
You can supply yourself, get comfortable with that and you'll
be stoppable. The more you can be alone and
love yourself, the more you can do anything in this world.
So I know I keep coming back to that because I can sit and I can
(29:20):
be comfortable with myself and that quietness.
Something will come to me. God will send a message, the
energy, the source, something will send a message like that
just happened to me with that download for this disaster
restoration companies. But you got to be still gross.
It can't catch you. I used to be busy when I used to
back in my party and is running around everywhere so busy
nothing could catch me. And then once I got still and I
(29:42):
was silent and I was in solitude.
That's Mike, what I call my 3 s s.
I wrote about it in a Happier than Life book.
Those three things, stillness, silence and solitude will answer
any question. Most of us can't do that, kids.
18 year old kid going to grab their phone and look down.
I, I take phone vacations. You want to hack, take a phone
(30:03):
vacation for 24 hours, turn yourphone off and don't look at it.
I do it for I did it for 11 dayslast year.
I'm going to do it for seven days every single year within
Christmas and New Year's, I shutmy phone off and I put it away.
It was a shock because you don'trealize how much you need your
phone. But then I just after three days
I. Loved it.
So I really appreciate you joining me. 30 minutes here has
(30:26):
gone by in a flash, folks, for listening in, I'm going to put
the links to Kelly's book in thedescription.
Harder than life, happier than Life.
Before we head off, Kelly, you have any last minute thoughts?
I'm a big I have this up in my in my bathroom.
I I love the Ram Dass quote of love everybody and tell the
truth. The truth will always set you
free and if you're love yourselfenough to always tell the truth,
(30:48):
you won't have any chaos in yourlife.
It's weak people that need to lie.
Just love everybody, tell the truth, and be comfortable being
uncomfortable. Well, thanks so much for joining
us, folks. Again, we'll put all the links
in the description and go check them out.
Hope you have a great rest of your day, everybody that's
listening. And Kelly, thanks so much for
joining. Us Thanks for having me, my
friend.
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