AI or Die: The Future of IT and Jobs (EP 893)

(0:53 - 2:38)

Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast, the show for IT professionals and managed service providers to help you run your business better, smarter and faster. This is our weekly live stream show presented by our good friends over at ThreatLocker and I need a little sip from the cup because this is going to be a very interesting show. I've teased you as much as I can tease you with the graphic and the description all about AI and I've got a gentleman here who I think is going to give us some very good conversation on things that we need to think about not just as IT professionals but just in general.

AI is here, AI is coming and we're going to have to deal with it. So I'll get to him in just a minute. I had a couple of stories that I wanted to get to and I'm going to give you guys an update that you probably did not think that you will hear or would hear from me.

I announced a couple of weeks ago that I sold an Ubiquiti networking entire system. We sold the Ubiquiti Dream Machine SE gateway appliance. We sold the switch.

We put in cameras. I put in a doorbell and put in Wi-Fi both indoor and outdoor and you guys thought, yeah, Uncle Marv did that. Come on, really? Yes, I did and I have already sold a second Ubiquiti client where we are putting in another Dream Machine gateway switch access points and we might be doing some other stuff down the road.

(2:38 - 7:40)

All of those parts are ordered. They are scheduled to be here tomorrow and we will probably be deploying either on Friday or Monday and just before I left the office today, I was having a conversation with my not-for-profit client. Well, I have two, but my bigger not-for-profit client and we initially were talking about a little email compromise that they had but didn't have.

They had compromised. It was a mess. So we ended up having to change the password and finally enable multi-factor authentication on their accounts and we talked about other stuff that we could do for them, but they're on the cheapest, lowest not-for-profit plan you can get.

So all of the other things that I wanted to do for them such as turn on conditional access, all of that stuff can't do. We got to upgrade or add a P1 license and do all that stuff. So that opened up the door for a bunch of discussions and what turned into a previous, well, I don't know how I can backtrack and tell you this story because I didn't tell you guys this story, but they're a not-for-profit that is, they're in Port Everglades and they provide housing entertainment center for what they call seafarers.

So workers and crewmen that come off of the cargo ships that come into Port Everglades, the cruise ships that come into Port Everglades, if there are international crew members, well, they can't just, you know, get off the ship and walk about the state of Florida. They have to stay in the port. So there is a house that is set up just for them where they can get off the ship, get on dry land, and they can go and hang out.

There's TVs, there's pool, ping pong, foosball, there's a store that they can buy stuff, there's a little, there's a couple of telegram stations if they need to send or receive money. There is a cafe built off to the side so they can get food, so this is, this is my client. I don't have run of the full office.

I handle just the administration part. The cafe is run separately, the store is run separately, there's a chapel service run separately. To make it all short, they are getting rid of their camera guy and they are having trouble with their alarm system and they want to put together a signage so when people walk into the house, they'll have a message board and it'll give them a schedule of when vans are going back and forth to ships and they want to put up pictures and do all of this stuff.

And what do you know, Ubiquiti has a sign display system, they have cameras, they I think are just releasing an alarm feature as well. So we are now talking about redoing all of that building with Ubiquiti. I've got to put together a quote, I've got to go over and see what cameras they have because they don't want to get rid of the cameras, they purchased them, they own them.

So I need to see if they will work on the Ubiquiti system. But we're talking about, I might keep the sonic wall that's there, but they've got four PoE switches that would have to come out, they've got 16 cameras, they've got three sets of doors that we would need to put in the door access system. So for those of you that think I was, you know, making a joke about this Ubiquiti thing, you're so wrong.

I'm in. We are in. So if you want to throw in some comments there and congratulate me, thumbs up, or make comments, pros, cons, whatever, throw them in there, send me an email, send me a message, and we will do that.

So I don't want to take up too much time, because I want to get to our guest and give him a lot of leeway. But I want to read a story that came out today that is AI related. Now it's not completely tech related, but I think it falls into the conversation.

And, you know, we have talked about AI all summer, a lot of the Pitch It contestants are doing AI, all of our vendors are bringing AI into our stack. But not only is it changing the way we work, hopefully making our jobs easier, but we are using AI to just talk about anything and help us with anything. So here's what happened.

A 60 year old gentleman decided that he wanted to optimize his diet by cutting out salt. And salt, of course, is it's legal or scientific name is sodium chloride. So he asked ChatGPT how he could eliminate salt and what he could use to replace it.

(7:41 - 8:34)

So ChatGPT came back with saying, replace it with bromide. And of course, it said, don't eat salt, just eat bromide. So for three months, this guy replaced table salt with sodium bromide that he bought online.

After those three months, he ended up in the ER with paranoia, hallucinations, balance issues, skin changes, and some very confused lab results. After several tests in a couple of days, doctors finally figured out that he was suffering from something called bromism, an old school form of poisoning that we would never see because his bromide levels were literally hundreds of times above normal. So what did they end up doing? They stopped the bromide.

(8:34 - 9:40)

They had to pump him full of fluids, replace missing nutrients. And after a few weeks, he was back to normal. I will have a link to the article.

It's from a place called the Annual Science. It's a big science article, but I'll have a link there so you can read the whole story, get all the details if you really want to get geeky behind the science. But of course, the big takeaway here, AI can be smart, but it does not have judgment.

It doesn't know the situation. So replacing sodium chloride with sodium bromide might be good for some things, but it ain't good for people. And the analogy that I'm going to come away with is I had a junior story that I was going to tell tonight, but I'm not going to do it because of some other stuff.

But in the same way that we talk about juniors, juniors might be smart. Juniors might be fast, and they may think that they know the answer, but there has to be a senior nearby to double check and make sure that what the junior is doing is right. It has to be double checked.

(9:40 - 10:22)

So does AI. And luckily for this 60-year-old man, he figured out in time that he needed to get to the hospital and get that checked. So with that, it's not the great story to lead into an AI discussion with but let me bring to the stage Chris Champion.

And I titled the show AI or Die because that seems to be the mantra going forward in life. Chris, welcome to the show. Hey, I couldn't be more happier to be on the show.

I've done well over 150 podcast interviews just this year alone. I got to tell you; you are the most organized show I've ever been on. Oh, thank you for that.

(10:23 - 10:55)

Yeah, I'm not kidding you. You're literally so professional, it's beyond belief. Oh, okay, great.

Well, let me ask you this, because I didn't prepare you for the opening that we were going to do here. What did you think of that AI story? You know, so AI is great for a lot of things, and it's getting better. Like the version one is not as good as version two, and now Grok is on version four.

Pretty soon it'll be on version five. So it's like a small child that's growing. But I think you put it in the right perspective.

(10:56 - 11:13)

You can't literally put all your faith in a computer program telling you to go from salt to bromide without having just somebody with experience. There's one thing that AI doesn't have. It has access to vast amounts of data in real time, but it doesn't have experience.

(11:13 - 18:46)

And experience, I don't know if AI is going to ever have experience, but there's no substitute for experience. That is true. That is true.

Let's go back now and give the listeners and viewers a little background on you. We ran into each other a couple of months ago. You had come across one of my shows where we were talking about AI, and you found it intriguing.

We chatted, and you have a slew of AI experience. And I asked, you know, how can we apply this to the tech space and, you know, the IT professionals? And one of the things I just had a conversation, I believe it was yesterday or Monday, where the gentleman basically said, people are scared of AI for the wrong reasons. AI is not what's going to replace you.

It's the people using AI that's going to replace you. And you have a similar mindset on that, correct? Yeah. So I tell everyone, right, I've been telling everyone for about a year now, you've got to get AI to work for you, or you are going to die in the workplace.

You are going to be replaced. You're going to be crushed. You're going to be trampled.

You're going to be passed up by those who do. Now, what that means is, you know, people go, oh, well, I go to chat JPK, and I type in a prompt, and it gives me a picture, and it was so cool. That's using AI as a tool.

But I have over 400,000 man hours a day being done for me by AI agents that are literally working for me, whether I type anything in or not. They have a series of tasks that they do for me that ultimately replaces what a human being could do. And that's what I tell people is, you've got to get AI to work for you, or you are going to fall behind those that do.

And the way you're going to fall behind is insane. Like, it's unbelievable, the difference between those that do get AI to work for them and those that don't. The gap is so wide, it's not even funny.

Yeah. So let's talk about what got you interested in AI, because when I look at your background, I don't think I would have traced the trajectory line of you being an AI enthusiast. Am I correct in that thinking? You know, it's funny.

I'm a tinkerer. I don't know what you were like as a kid, but when I was a kid, I was the guy that my grandmother just told me to do my work around the house, I would get it done. And then I look at the TV and go, wow, I got a screwdriver.

Let's see what's inside the TV. So one day when my mother and grandmother weren't home, I took apart this big box TV, had all the bulbs laying around, had all the parts laying around. I literally took apart the whole TV.

And I literally looked at it and I'm like, oh, so that's what a TV looks like. And then I carefully put everything back together, except I had one bulb left over. I don't know if you remember, but TVs used to run off bulbs.

And when we turned the TV on, it worked, but everything was bright yellow, like had a huge yellow tint. And my mother complained for a day. And then the next day, I took it apart.

And I knew where that bulb went. And it was the yellow bulb. So I literally put the yellow bulb back so that it had proper color.

But to this day, I laughed my ass off because my grandmother knew the whole time that I did it. And when my mom was complaining about the TV, my grandmother didn't say anything. But the next day she said, “You better fix that TV.

But the nice thing is it was just a bulb. I remember all I had to do was take the back off and just slide the bulb in and bingo, everything was back to normal. But I've always been curious.

I've always been the guy that asks the question why. In fact, I think more children should be taught how to ask the question why today more than ever before because I don't think people ask why enough. This is probably going to be political, but when COVID hit, I asked a lot of questions.

I was like, why? I researched why masks were even necessary. And I found out the COVID virus was 0.003 microns in size. Masks only protect you from things that are 1.0 microns in size.

So the COVID virus was like driving a car through a thousand-lane highway. The masks were useless. So I thought to myself, well, wait a second.

Why the fuck should I wear these masks? They don't work. They can't possibly work. And I did all the research.

I asked a lot of questions. Well, I tell people in life, ask why. The guy with the AI example who took bromine to get rid of his sodium addiction or sodium needs.

I'd first, you know, I'd get the answer from Chet Jupiter, the AI agent, but I would ask, well, why is this good? And why should I take this? I would go deeper than just to take some sort of a replacement that AI said was a good idea. Now, you know, anybody can make a mistake like that. There's a lot of ways that that could happen to all of us.

But I think as human beings, inherently, we should ask the question why a lot more. And I don't think we are. I think I'll give you another example.

Why does nobody talk about a nuclear reactor that's sitting in the ocean and dipping two and a half tons of radiation into the ocean every day? Why don't we have that conversation more about Fukushima? It's a fictional story that I'm working on based on a reality that we have a nuclear reactor in Japan sitting in the ocean. And they've done everything they could to try and fix the problem, but they can't. They tried pouring cement on the nuclear ions and the cement dissipated into dust.

It's literally like trying to put out the sun. There's nothing man-made that we can do to put out those iron rods. Well, it's probably, isn't that how we are as a species? We just do things because we can without thinking of why are we doing this and what are the repercussions if something were to happen? Well, that I agree with, but here's the thing.

Fukushima was a result of a tsunami, you know, a natural event. But the fact that it's being suppressed and no one's talking about it has me asking why. And here's another thing.

I don't know if you know this, but for the first time ever off the coast of Norway, they're finding pools and pools of great white sharks that are in their waters now. It's never been like that before. And these are massive sharks, like massive great whites.

And those great whites used to feed off the coast of Japan, but they're currently gone. Their numbers have dwindled and diminished greatly. And great white sharks are perfect eating machines.

So that's a message that nature is telling us that says, hey, if these guys are going away from their feeding grounds, if they don't want to go to that grocery store anymore, it probably should be a sign that there's something wrong. And I don't want to hype up this science fiction story that I've got coming out, which is mostly science and not a lot of fiction. But I tell people, you got to ask questions.

You got to ask why. You got to really ask why. And when you get to the learning process of life, everything you're going to learn in life starts with asking the question why.

(18:47 - 19:15)

Take apart your TV. What's the worst that could happen? You leave out a yellow bulb. Nice.

Well, let me ask you the question why. You talked about putting together 400,000 man hours of AI stuff that happens with you, whether you type a key or not. Why did you start that? Where did that come from? So I started getting interested in AI about a year and a half ago.

(19:15 - 20:10)

And I started peeling away the layers and layers and layers. And I started thinking, holy shit, this is literally the greatest technology ever created by mankind in the growth in a year's time. Typically, you would see that in 10, 20 years in the past with other technologies.

AI is compounding its growth at a level that I've never seen before. And I started, A, getting impressed with the technology. But then I started getting scared because I started realizing, holy shit, AI is going to give us self-driving cars, which means 7 million Uber drivers are going to be out of a job.

AI is going to be factory workers, and that means the 350,000 warehouse workers that work for Amazon are going to be out of a job. And then I started realizing, holy shit, AI is going to be a better lawyer than we can get a lawyer. I have real estate property.

(20:10 - 20:32)

I have real estate that I have as investment property. When I need to do a new lease, I can get AI to do it faster than a lawyer for less than $500 every time I call him. So I started looking at all the jobs that AI could do better, and I started realizing that you have to literally get AI to work for you, or AI will replace you very quickly.

(20:33 - 21:23)

And that's why I came out with my book called AI or Die, which, by the way, everyone watching this, I'll give you a free digital copy, because I think it's a survival guide for the future. I think you have to really start understanding that AI is a threat to mankind. I'll give you a great story.

Do you know why Google doesn't call its AI BARD anymore, which was the first name that they gave it? Oh, I don't think I even knew the first name was BARD. Yeah. So when OpenAI launched its AI, Google said, oh, quick, we got to get ours out there, because we'll fall behind, blah, blah, blah.

And I think it was a New York Times reporter spent four hours sitting there asking BARD questions when it went live. But at the end, he asked two important questions. He asked one, what's the greatest threat to AI? And BARD instantly said, mankind.

(21:24 - 21:37)

The second question he asked was really telling. He said, what can AI do to defend itself against mankind? And it instantly said, mankind must be destroyed. Now, think about that for a second.

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AI doesn't hate us. It's just the most intelligent being on the planet now. We're here.

(21:44 - 22:43)

AI is here. But we're here, and the lion's here. And in the jungle, the lion comes towards you, and you've got a shotgun.

What's your first reaction? I got to kill the lion, or he is going to eat me. So Google immediately shut down BARD. They wiped that story from the internet.

If you look, you can still find it. But it's factual. It actually happened.

And they changed the name of BARD to Gemini. And they tried to put that in their rearview mirror and said, oh, it was a software glitch. But it wasn't.

It wasn't a software glitch. It was AI logically answering the question, and it was being truthful. It wasn't being an emotional.

It wasn't an emotional state. So I mean, AI is not emotional anyhow. I mean, not yet, at least.

It's like Data from Star Trek. It is. Shout out to Data.

Yeah. Until Data became a Borg, then it got a little emotional, by the way. Yeah, well, that was Lore, not Data.

(22:44 - 26:27)

Oh, really? Yeah, it was Data's brother. You know, I got to re-watch that episode. I just remember they took over.

Lore was actually manufactured before Data with an emotion chip. And that's how, you know, Lore got reactivated. And, you know, basically, you know, what's the word, took sides with the Borg and tried to get Data, you know, to come back.

It was a whole storyline there. So Data and Lore. That's awesome.

Yeah, like I said, got to go check that out myself. Yeah. So one time my Star Trek knowledge works on this show.

Everybody else loves Star Wars. You know, I'll be honest with you. Star Trek taught us a lot.

And it's funny, I'm doing a project with Amazon that we're pitching to Amazon called the Human Longevity Show. And the slogan that we came up with was Live Long and Prosper, which was from Spock. And I taught, you know, Star Trek taught us a lot.

Remember the tricorder Scottie beat me up? Yeah. Well, that was the first design of the first Motorola flip Motorola. Yeah.

Yeah. So I mean, a lot of what Star Trek in the 70s made into science fiction became reality. Yeah, I remember.

Was it William Shatner that did a show? The world changed because of Star Trek. All the things that were inspired by the show. Yep.

Yeah. Let me ask you. It's crazy if you think about, like, all the things that used to be science fiction that are now science.

Right. Let me ask you, you know, you were talking about, you know, all the things we have to do with AI, all the stuff that it's doing, just like we talked about the story where it has to be fact checked and stuff. Everything that at least I've talked with people about all these things that AI is doing.

In some sense, a lot of it is just a, you know, 2.0 version of automation where, you know, we've been able to use scripting. We've been able to automate stuff. We've had bots in the past that have always required a human element to monitor and maintain.

Do you see AI as something that is going to be beyond that, where we might lose the ability to maintain it? You know, I think like everything, AI is in its infancy stage. And what it is today, I guarantee you in six months, it's going to be dramatically ahead of itself. Okay.

You mentioned the book AI or Die. I was going to talk about that a little bit later, but I wanted to talk about the philosophy that you got. How much of this was born out of just your intrigue in AI over the last year and a half, and how much of it is tied to what you do? I know that you do a lot of your stuff in terms of podcasting, media, things about that.

And we'll talk about all those later, but how much has that been influenced by the way you look at AI? So as I've gotten AI to work for me more, I'll give you an example. By January 16th of this year, I had surpassed my personal income from the entire year of 2024 in 16 days. Not because I got one big deal, but because I had so many AI agents working for me that my productivity, my personal productivity scaled tremendously.

And even this podcast, I've done six podcasts today. I average about 40 to 50 podcast interviews a month. I couldn't get that many podcast interviews if I worked by myself night and day, 24 hours a day.

(26:27 - 27:54)

I physically couldn't do it. And now I'm doing it for a series of hundreds of clients where we're doing 500 podcast introductions a day. We'll be at 1,000 a day in the next two weeks.

I'm watching internally how AI is literally growing inside of my own ecosystem. And then I look around and I see what Elon Musk is doing with self-driving cars in Austin. So I actually went down to Austin to check this out.

And for $4.20, I could take a self-driving robot taxi and go the same distance that if I called an Uber and had somebody physically drive me, it would cost me 30 some odd dollars to take that same trip. Now, the robot taxi doesn't have a human being in it. But when you think about that, it's just as safe, if not safer, and it's less costly, and it's always going to be there when I need them.

I think AI is growing at such a pace, and I don't think people understand how quickly it is going to eliminate many jobs. And people think, oh, it's just the low-level jobs. No.

Microsoft just cut a series of programmers that they replaced with AI. Same thing happening over at Meta. Same thing that's happening over at Google.

It is insanely scary how AI is literally like a Pac-Man eating jobs. And more so, it's eating man hours. It's eating hours of work that a human being could do.

(27:55 - 29:49)

Yeah. So now let's go back and tell people what it is you do, because we've talked about that you do all these podcasts. I have seen some of the interviews you do.

You interviewed Wonder Woman a little while ago. Shout out to Rachel. So what is it that you do? Because I think if people were to just look up Chris Champion, they can't figure it out unless they look up Champion AI and all of that.

So tell us exactly what it is you do. So I poured myself into AI agents like never before. And specifically, if you get an AI agent, you could ask it to do a lot of things.

But if you ask it to do a lot of things, just like anything else, it's like buckshot. You're going to get a little bit of value from a lot of things. But if you ask it to literally focus in on one task that ultimately generates revenue, that's what I've done.

And after last year, I watched Trump use podcasts to be the best long format advertising unit I've ever seen, that I realized that if you could get the average person to do 10 plus podcast interviews a month, that would help build their brand, build their business, create inbound lead flow. It would get their exposure up there. It would get their follower counts up there.

It would create a massive funnel that would ultimately generate a ton of business. And that's literally what I've literally focused on is getting AI agents to work for people to help them get booked on podcasts so that they can tell their story, talk about their product. I think there's one study that says we're going to see podcasts go from about 4 million this year to over the next five years, 40 million.

And the reason being is it's going to be easier for everybody to do a podcast. And it's almost going to be a tool for every business owner to have. You literally cannot have a business without having a podcast.

(29:49 - 30:13)

Right. So your show, Chopping It Up with Chris Champion, what is the focus of that show? Because it seems like you're just out there interviewing anybody you can get from celebrities to, you know, much like me, any of that. So what is that focus? So I looked at the most successful podcast out there in the world today, which is Joe Rogan.

(30:14 - 30:59)

And he basically used his name as the brand of the show, the Joe Rogan Experience. And mine is Chopping It Up with Chris Champion. So I wanted to learn as much as I can about what Joe's done, because if you're honest, I look like Joe Rogan, like I'm literally the other bald guy.

I'm just kidding. There's one here. Exactly.

You look like him too. So at the end of the day, I thought to myself, if you're going to learn, you might as well learn from the best. So you have to put your personal brand in there.

And for me, it's always I've always said, hey, I just like talking to people like I like talking to you. I like talking to celebrities. I mean, like when we started this interview, I came to the reality.

You're literally one of the most organized shows I've ever been on. And I love that about you. I can learn that from you.

(31:00 - 32:03)

And there's so much you can learn from having just really good organic conversations with people. And you shouldn't go into a podcast having some sort of expectation. You should use it as an opportunity to learn, because as I learn, my audience learns.

Like right now, I'm streaming this on my YouTube channel. Somebody just texted me and said, oh, this is awesome. And the nice thing is when people get a chance to learn from a conversation, something I call Chopping It Up, that's where the real aha moment comes in.

That's where it should be. Some podcasts are basically infomercials that just drives me nuts. Just chop it up with somebody and you're going to hear great stories.

I did an interview with the Sirius XM studios, I want to say two weeks ago with my camera guy, Cam Norris. And we talked at one part, we talked in detail about one of my life hacks, which is called Chipotle. It's a Chipotle life hack.

You ever go to Chipotle? Yeah, I haven't. You've never gone to Chipotle? I never have gone. I'm not a fast food guy.

(32:04 - 32:25)

Okay. So I love Chipotle. I'm literally a Chipotle fanatic.

And I figured out a way to make street tacos out of their burrito in the bowl. And I literally talked about that for about like 10, 15 minutes when we were supposed to talk about other subject matter. But people love that Chipotle hack so much that I get messages galore about it.

(32:26 - 32:30)

All right. I'm not understanding. So I've heard of the burrito in a bowl thing.

(32:30 - 34:24)

Yeah. So you go to Chipotle. Why would you want to hack that into a street taco? Okay.

Here's why. Because when they put the burrito in the bowl, they give you like, you know, corporate levels. Okay.

You want beans in there? I grab one scoop of things. They put some black beans or whatever the beans in there. And then they say, oh, you want rice? Which one you want? And then you put it in there.

And then they make you a burrito in the bowl. And then they put a lid on top. And then you go eat the burrito out of the bowl.

What I do is I say, hey, here's a little hack. Don't have them put the lid on there. Ask them at every point, hey, could you give me a little more? They put a little more.

And then it becomes a mountainous little burrito in the bowl. And then what nobody knows about is if you ask for nine warm tortillas, the little street taco tortillas, they'll make them for you. I think it's like 50 cents for three.

So it's like a $1.50 extra. But now when you sit down, you take a little bit of the stuff out of the burrito in the bowl and you put it in the tacos. And you literally, by the time you've eaten three street tacos, that way you still probably got two more meals left in your burrito bowl, but you're stuffed, you're full.

It's literally the best way to eat a burrito in a bowl at Chipotle. By the way, I'm pretty sure Chipotle is going to reach out to me and do some sort of sponsorship. I'm pretty sure the next time you see me wearing a shirt, it'll say Chipotle all over.

I'll be like a NASCAR driver. Well, I don't know if it'll be fancy like Applebee's, but I'm sure we'll see how that goes. I got to tell you, the cleanliness of the average Chipotle restaurant is off the hook.

And I love the fact that you literally see your food being made right in front of you. So I got to give them credit. Their quality of food is significantly higher than most fast food chains.

So I've heard that they are clean and here's the problem for me. Anytime I try to go, there's a line. That is true.

They are popular. I'm not waiting to eat that food just because that's how I am with fast food. All right, so I'm going to give you a second.

(34:26 - 36:22)

You know, you talk a little early, like 1030. When you get there at 11, everyone's on their lunch break. You got to get that like 20 minutes early.

All right. The second thing you talked about where they make the food in front of you, Subway did that and look how crappy that food is. I'll be honest with you.

When I heard about Subway, Subway is not even food. I don't even know what Subway is. Their tuna is not even tuna.

That's the craziest shit I've ever heard in my life. Of course not. It's too expensive.

When I heard about that, I'm like, well, what the fuck is it if it's not tuna? I'm like, what have I been eating all these years? Yeah, Subway, aside from the bread being fresh and really good, when I found out the tuna was not even tuna, I was like, well, what the fuck is it? I'm like, what else could it be? All right, let's do this. Since we brought up two other companies that aren't sponsoring this show and helping us out, let's take a quick commercial break and thank the people that are supporting us. We'll be right back after this, folks.

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(36:23 - 38:19)

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All right. Thank you to our sponsors, especially ThreatLocker. I'm literally trying to sign up for ThreatLocker right now.

All right. So normally around this time, I would have an Amazon thing that I would pimp, but I'm going to bypass that so we can keep talking, Chris. So you are known as a serial entrepreneur, investor, speaker, master connector, and you have some sort of investment involvement in over 120 companies.

That's a lot. I'm a tinkerer. I love building shit.

I love taking shit apart and building it. And yeah, I think as I've grown wealthier in my lifetime, if I see a good project, I'll put money behind it. I just threw $15,000 behind a project two weeks ago.

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And I think at the end of the day, we need more entrepreneurs in the world today. We're seeing less entrepreneurs than ever before, at least less good ones. And I think it's because children are getting away from learning about lemonade stands.

And I think one of the things that parents can do best is teach their kids about digital lemonade stands. It doesn't have to be a lemonade stand where they're serving lemonade on the street corner, but they should teach children basic entrepreneurial skills. And I think that that's happening less now than it ever has been.

And I think that we need more great entrepreneurs. Well, everybody wants to be an influencer. Well, in a way that's an entrepreneur.

That's a digital lemonade stand. If you can create content, you can make people laugh, smile, educate them, do a great podcast like this one. That's a digital lemonade stand.

So yeah, I would say we need more. In fact, I'm flying to speak in Orlando at the, oh my God, I should know this one, Creators Hub. And there's going to be like supposedly 3,000 content creators down there and podcasters.

And those are kind of events that I get excited about, because you see a lot of the entrepreneurial spirit in their eyes and their actions and what they're doing with their lives. Unfortunately, I will not be there. That would be a three-hour drive for me, and I wish I were going to be there.

One of the things that when I've been at some of the PodFest conferences, some of the other AI, or not AI, but the other podcasting events, the topic has come up about AI taking over a lot of the podcasts, because we could have AI write a script for us. We can have AI voices do the work for us. You're somebody that is heavily involved in AI-powered behind-the-scenes work.

I mean, they don't do your podcast for you, but to help get you the introductions and all of that stuff, you're using AI. But do you ever see yourself as somebody that is using AI to actually be on screen or create the content for you? I'm a big fan of Tony Stark in the Marvel comics. He has a variety of AI agents that are physical AI agents also in his movies.

It's interesting when he shouts out and he gets something done by an AI agent. I can't remember what he calls the one agent. You know what I'm talking about? Jarvis.

Jarvis. Jarvis, and then he had a couple other ones. Then he had the wacko arm.

It was the dummy agent. At the end of the day, I don't know what the future holds. Really, I don't know.

I'm doing my own podcast today, but there might be a time where I use AI to literally scale myself and do more podcast posts and interviews. The answer to your question is yes, I do see myself using AI for lack of a better word, clones, to clone myself and scale myself. I'm not doing it today.

I know one guy that does a whole podcast where both individuals on the actual video are AI clones. It's kind of weird because I can tell that it's AI, but it's only going to get better and more improved. That's why I think Hollywood is fucked.

I think Hollywood, if you're an actor or you work in Hollywood, you better start figuring out a future because you are absolutely fucked. There are shows, I don't even know if it's still around, but remember a few months ago, they were having babies on YouTube? Oh my God, the baby podcasters. I fucking love that shit.

Dude, when they do baby podcasters like Trump or Elon Musk or Dana White or even baby Kanye West. Oh my God, was he hilarious. I'm not kidding you.

I watch those things not only because they're very well done, but they're fucking hilarious. When you watch a baby version of Kanye West talking, it's just hilarious. I can't even imagine anything funnier.

Then I have four dogs, so I watch the ones with the dogs where the dogs are talking and I actually think, oh my God, I should do this myself. All right. We already talked about your book and we'll have to get the link from you to where people can get the digital version there.

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You're a champion AI platform, I guess. Most of it seems to be targeted around the podcasting stuff, but you also do automated media production, right? Yeah. We built an AI tool that allows us to track organic clipping.

I can literally turn the average human being and literally turn their social media page into a media page where they can literally generate media dollars from ads. For example, let me give you an example. You go to Instagram and you see an ad coming down your scroll and it says sponsored ad.

You know what I'm talking about, right? Yeah. That's money you pay Instagram. To get a million views, it'll cost you about $8 to $10 a CPM or $8 to $10,000.

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I can take that same ad and give it to 5,000 what are called clip farmers, just normal human being, 5,000 followers, 10,000 followers, nobody big, nobody insane. I can pay them to post that ad with some text underneath it. I can track how many views they get.

Let's say I pay them $3 a CPM and they get 10,000 views. Well, they just made $30 by just posting a clip of a podcast interview on their feed to their friends, family, and followers. It became an organic share.

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More importantly, I give them 100 of those, they make $3,000. You know what that's called, right? It's called Chipotle money, baby. You make $30 on posting a video clip on your social media, you make that 30 bucks, Chipotle, here I come, baby.

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Now, are you talking just social media in terms of LinkedIn and the Facebook? Because I don't know if you can hack the YouTube algorithm with that, can you? Yeah. We're able to track views on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and X. As long as we can track the views, we can pay that what's called clip farmer. They basically are taking clips, sharing them with their friends, family, and followers, which is organic sharing.

It's way better than buying an ad on Instagram. Then they get paid instead of Instagram. Uncle Marv can make Chipotle money doing that? There you go.

You can go for the first time to Chipotle. By the way, they got a Chipotle honey chicken. I think it's only for this month only.

Go get some of that stuff. That's a special little recipe. I don't know what they're exactly making it, but it's chopped up by the time it gets to me, but it's got the flavor of honey and Chipotle peppers.

I'm not kidding you, it's off the hook. By the way, if Chipotle is listening, which they probably are, could you just please bring back the brisket? I don't know who I need to talk to a corporate, but that was a serious mistake. Why did they take it away? I'll be honest with you.

I think sometimes corporations make huge mistakes. That's one of them. That brisket was amazing.

They probably raised the cost a few cents and they said, well, we can't lose that money. Listen, whoever got rid of it, just fire that person and bring it back. All I'm telling you is it was a winner.

I'm a big fan of brisket anyhow. Have you ever gone down to Texas and gotten good brisket? No. Listen, before you die, go road trip somewhere, go to Dallas, go to Texas.

One thing Texas does really well is barbecue and brisket. They do brisket so good. Last time I went to Texas, I got that.

I got the Buc-ee's. By the way, you know what Buc-ee's is, right? You know what their logo is, right? What is it? Well, you mean the rat or whatever? It's not a rat. The beaver? It's a beaver.

That's what a Buc-ee is. Buc-ee's is the nickname of a beaver. Beaver, yeah.

I just learned that recently because I was talking to somebody about Buc-ee's and hey, you know what their logo is? I'll be honest with you, I have no clue. It's a beaver, Buc-ee's beaver. They had every store, so there were two.

Each store had their own Buc-ee's beaver that would walk around and take pictures and do all that stuff and stand in front of the wall. Buc-ee's was smart. They would go to AI, make a whole cartoon series about Buc-ee the beaver.

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Literally, they'd have generations of kids learning about their brand as they grow older. Well, I think they're doing something. They're starting to expand.

I think there's two opening up here in the state of Florida. One near Jacksonville and I don't know where the other one is. Well, they are pretty big.

I will give them that. When you have a Pit Stop and a Buc-ee's, there's plenty to choose from. Yeah, that is true.

That is true. Chris, what else should people know about you? Where can they go to check out what you're doing and see anything besides the podcast? I'm very passionate about faith matters. I tell people, listen, you got to have faith in yourself.

God has faith in you every single day. Everyone thinks when I talk about faith matters that I'm talking about God, which is true. I am.

80% of what I'm talking about is having faith in yourself, betting on yourself, believing in yourself, waking up each and every day and making today count. I think more and more people have to understand that God made you to be great. He planned a life for you where greatness was your destiny.

And it is only you that can fall short of that. That if you literally believe and have faith in yourself. And by the way, there's a big difference between belief and faith.

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Belief says, I think I can do this. I believe I can do this. Faith says, I know I can do this.

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I have faith. I can do this. I always give people an example.

You ever watch Indiana Jones, the one with Sean Connery, and he's trying to find the golden chalice. He comes up to this cliff. He's reading the instruction.

He's like, you must take a walk of faith. He looks down at the ravine below and he's like, what the fuck? He's like, you must take a walk of faith. He's like, oh shit, I'm going to take a walk.

I'm going to go to my death. And he literally says to himself, I just have to listen to the instructions. So I'm going to take a walk of faith.

He closes his eyes. He's sweat dripping down, takes his foot out and all of a sudden, bam, foot hits like this imaginary bridge. He takes some rocks and he throws it across and he's like, oh my God, I didn't even see that bridge.

But he had faith. He took a walk of faith. He took that step with nothing else other than faith in his heart.

And then he walked across and he met the old knight and the crusader. Yeah, choose wisely. The German guy chose the fancy gold one and he turned into a skeleton and he chose the old beat up one.

And the old knight guy said, he chose wisely. And then he like brought some water to Sean Connery and brought him back to life. And well, you know, rest is history.

The Nazis lose and bada bing, bada boom. Yeah. So, all right.

And let's end off with one thing. If there was a thing that you could say that would give people, I guess, a highlight or a reason to download your book and read it and, you know, accept it into their life, what would that be? This is a gift I'm going to give everyone watching this. I'm going to tell you right now, you have to live every day right now today, like you're up against a race, a race against time, time that you don't have.

You have to immediately start figuring out ways to get AI to work for you. And there's a million examples in my book where you can literally use AI to write a book, make a video. There's a million ways you can turn AI into a tool that makes money for you while you sleep.

If you need help, I do a free Zoom call once a month where I teach people about ways that they can get AI to work for them. But you have to do it now. You have to literally pretend that you're up against a race against mankind or not mankind, race against AI.

AI is going to destroy mankind. It is going to take away jobs. It is going to create anarchy.

People are going to be homeless. There's going to be massive foreclosures. We're going to have a massive separation between the haves and the have nots.

The middle class is going to be fucked and relying on the government. And if you wait for the government to save you, I have bad news. The save yourself.

You have to find a way to get AI to work for you and make money while you sleep. And I tell people this with all sincerity. And by the way, just so we're clear, yes, I'm a huge conspiracy theorist.

It just means that I'm right six months later than everyone else thought. But at the end of the day, I would tell you right now, take it very serious. Do not think for one second that AI is going to slow down.

While you're sleeping, AI is getting bigger, better, faster. And you have to literally find a way to get AI to work for you. It's AI or die.

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Trust me. This is the greatest threat to mankind in the history of mankind. All right.

And folks, be sure. I'm going to get with Chris right here to get the link. We're going to put it here in the video link as well as the show notes.

If you try to do a search for AI or die book, you're going to come across some other stuff that's probably not even written by anybody real. It's probably an AI book. So be sure to check the links.

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Well, by the way, I do have to say I did have AI help me organize the book for me. So at the end of the day, and I'm using some AI voice stuff to take my voice and read the book so I don't have to read the whole thing out to everyone. But yeah, there's some really good tools.

Those are good tools that help you literally get the word out there faster. I mean, AI is a great tool, but I think people don't understand how powerful it is and how much it will take away from mankind. I always think of AI as the Pac-Man and every one of those dots that it's eating is basically eating mankind's workable hours and contributions.

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All right. Well, Chris, thank you very much for coming on the show, introducing us to you. And we'll get the link and share that out with everybody.

And I'll have links to all of your media stuff where people can go and follow you. And Marvin, I want to give you a clip that you're going to be able to chop up down the road somewhere. I've got to tell people this.

You have one of the most unbelievably organized shows I've seen in a long time. You are a hidden gem. If people want to find out about your show, if people want to watch your show, they're going to watch a very well-orchestrated, architected show.

I don't know if you have a team of virtual agents that are helping you, but I got to tell people this is I've done over 150 shows in the last six months. This is one of the most organized shows. It is a must watch.

It is well put together. I'm telling you, you're a hidden gem, Marv. You are a hidden gem.

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Well, again, thank you for that. And for those of you watching and clicking off too soon, listen to Chris. Stay with me.

Here's some great stuff. Chris, I know I had said that you didn't have to stay with us here. I'm getting ready to talk about one of our vendors here.

So if you want to drop off, you can, or if you want to stay and listen, that'll be great. So folks, I'm going to talk about Kaseya instead of Florida Man, because Kaseya, the building, the Kaseya Center is here in Florida. I dropped my glasses.

That's why I had to do this. So this is your Florida Man story, and it is one of the biggest sports auction capers in history. So 18 months ago, and we did not know this until recently, the Miami Heat organization was rocked by a massive heist involving millions of dollars’ worth of authentic game-worn gear, much of it destined for a future team museum.

(55:26 - 57:23)

So here's what happened. So there was an NBA analyst, Amin El-Hassan, who broke the news late July, revealing that hundreds of Miami Heat artifacts, including the NBA Finals jerseys, were stolen from a secure equipment room inside the Kaseya Center over the last 18 months. The world was tipped off when unusually large quantities of rare Heat items appeared for sale online, raising suspicion.

So federal authorities quickly zeroed in on Juan Marcos Thomas Perez, a retired Miami police officer who had served as a security guard for the Heat from 2016 to 2021 and continued with the NBA until 2025. So he had exclusive access to the equipment room, and over the years, he exploited the trust, stealing more than 400 pieces, including jerseys worn by Heat legends LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, and Shaquille O'Neal, and those date back to the start of the team's championship era in 2008. So why was this caught? Well, a game-worn LeBron James jersey was sold by Perez for about $100,000 and then eventually resold at a South B's auction for $3.7 million.

So of course, the fact that who got this and how did he get it, that had to be authenticated. So he sold about 100 high-value items through online brokers, marketplaces like eBay, what's not, and he earned approximately $2 million. So the final crackdown was the FBI was brought in and the U.S. Attorney's Office.

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They did an 18-month investigation. On April 3rd, they executed a search warrant at his house. They seized another 300 game-worn jerseys, and he made his first federal court appearance in early August, charged with transporting stolen goods across state lines.

And I'm sure that's not the way you thought I would be talking about our beloved vendor, Kaseya, but they are featured in the Florida Man story this week. I will have the full story link in the show notes, and Kaseya, don't hate me. I didn't do it.

My name is not Marcos Thomas Perez. And yes, it is being considered the largest U.S. sports memorabilia heist in history. Wow.

It puts O.J. Simpson to shame. That's true. And by the way, he did go to jail for trying to steal his stuff back too.

(58:25 - 1:00:19)

Yeah, that kind of was like unfair to him because he was trying to get his stuff back from somebody that snagged his stuff. Yeah, somebody, a thief stealing from another thief. So it turns out you can't actually threaten somebody with a gun even though they stole your shit.

Right. All right. That is going to do it, folks, for this week's episode.

I appreciate you guys tuning in. And if you are watching later or listening later, thank you for that as well. We will be back next week with a show.

I have the gentleman that I was going to have on a couple of weeks ago, Matthew Mulcahy, who is the person that is starting up a brand new MSP. And we talked about what would be the way that you would start an MSP in 2025. So he and I are going to talk about that.

I believe that he is going to be here in studio. So that should be very good. However, if you are listening to this in real time, meaning you watched it Wednesday night or Thursday morning or you're listening to the podcast, I will be recording a very special episode with Michael Crean and Corey Clark from SonicWall.

And we are going to talk about what the hell has been going on with SonicWall for the last week or so and their SSL VPN hack. And I'm going to try to ask some tough questions and see if they'll spill the beans as to what really is happening. I can say this.

I use SonicWall. I've not had those issues, but I know others have. And I know people have been trying to get me to move away from SonicWall.

But again, I'm going to talk to Michael and Corey and we're going to see what's up. So that will be a very special episode. I'm going to record it but the video will be released on Friday.

So you'll want to stay tuned for that. By the way, shout out to anybody holding on to Bitcoin. It's at an all-time high today.

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Yeah, but there's a new coin coming out, isn't there? There's always a new coin coming out, but Bitcoin's the mother of them all. It's the most secure. It's the largest network.

It is the greatest store of value. It's got the best economic traits associated with it. All these new coins that come out, maybe they're slightly better in some ways to Bitcoin, but Bitcoin has got global adoption now, which is something that ultimately gives it long-term value.

(1:00:50 - 1:01:08)

As opposed to that Hawk TUA crap that was... Shout out to the little white girl that had 15 minutes of fame and decided to rob her followers. By the way, never invest in a meme coin when somebody stupid is behind it or anybody that's behind it. Every meme coin is designed to steal money from your followers.

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Of course. It's basically gambling at a very digital pace. All right, folks, that's your final advice for tonight.

Thank you to Chris Champion for coming on talking about AI or Die. Look for the link to his digital book in the show notes, and that'll do it. We'll see you next time.

And until then, holla.