Produced By - Thinking Beyond Today: Building With Curiosity in a Changing World | 165: Pete Sena

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

Sakshi Sureka is a marketing professional, LinkedIn creator, and Paid Social Specialist at WPP Media. Originally from Kolkata, India, she moved to the UK to study Marketing after changing direction from science and economics. Along the way, she navigated the challenges of building a career as an international student while documenting her journey online. She shares practical insights on personal branding, content creation, marketing, and career growth with a LinkedIn community of more than 15,000 people. In this episode, Sakshi shares how moving from India to the UK changed her life, why building a personal brand on LinkedIn became one of her biggest career advantages, and what she learned while trying to break into the marketing industry during one of the toughest job markets for graduates. We also explore LinkedIn growth, storytelling, networking, content creation, and practical ways to stay consistent, build genuine relationships, and create career opportunities through authentic personal branding. Connect with Pete:https://www.linkedin.com/in/petersena/https://petesena.substack.com/https://www.petesena.com/ Timestamps:  00:00 - Why everyone is afraid of AI 01:11 - Meet Pete Sena 01:31 - Learning to code as a kid 03:10 - Wanting a creative career 03:41 - Starting a business at 19 04:19 - Business advice after 20 years 06:44 - Finding your own ikigai 07:08 - Why showing up every day matters 08:36 - Thinking like a futurist 10:35 - Pete's vision for the future of AI 12:17 - AI agents and personalized assistants 15:45 - The opportunities and risks of AI 17:04 - How Pete keeps up with everything 18:59 - Curiosity, innovation and lifelong learning 20:30 - The importance of mindset 21:51 - Building multiple businesses 23:42 - Helping companies adopt AI 26:30 - Is it too late to start with AI 29:07 - Should you be afraid of AI 30:52 - A quote everyone should remember 31:10 - Why Pete paused podcasting 32:43 - Pete's dream podcast guests 34:02 - Lessons from top entrepreneurs 36:15 - Life outside of work 37:39 - Pete's meditation routine 40:13 - Books that shaped Pete's thinking 41:51 - Writing his first book 42:58 - Where to find Pete 43:48 - Final thoughts Connect with Tomas:Stan: https://stan.store/TommenLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasloucky/⁠⁠Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisistommen/⁠⁠Unproduced:Newsletter: https://unproduced.substack.comYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@unproducednotesSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033Ddo8ibDlLYoaP7FFLIWMore:Links: https://linktr.ee/produced_by⁠⁠⁠Patreon: https://patreon.com/tomaslouckyNewsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://producednewsletter.substack.com/⁠The Podcast Club: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/25420030/Tools & gear that support the show:Metricool: https://f.mtr.cool/HRJBZKFavikon: https://www.favikon.com?fpr=tommenRiverside: https://riverside.partnerlinks.io/2752q1ai767zRa Optics: https://ra-optics.myshopify.com/discount/TOMMEN?rfsn=8803777.591d19JamX: https://jamx.ai/podcasters-offer?ref_id=e02d48af-ef66-4e76-b804-c2e8d282a8bfSome links are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. If you find them useful, using these links helps keep the podcast running. Thank you!  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Everyone is afraid of AI, Thomas. I'm afraid of AI, you're afraid of it. And if you say otherwise, you're lying. We're all afraid of it. Because right now, you either feel threatened by it, you feel thrilled by it, or it's likely both. We are all afraid of AI, myself included. These things are able to do so many more things way better, way faster, way cheaper than we can do as humans. So what we have to understand is the painter hated the photographer, the photographer hated the Photoshopper.

The Photoshopper hates the AI generated image, right? We're in this thing now where your generation hates overproduced content that I look at. 8K perfect stuff, perfect makeup. You want really, you want authentic, right? And then Gen Alpha doesn't want to see AI slop. They don't want to see eye-generated content. They want to see pitfalls and mistakes and things falling down all over the place, right? So I think what's happening is that people are revolting against AI in a lot of cases.

So I think that like anything, everything in life is about moderation. It's about finding and tuning the dials on what's right for you, your customer, your business, market. Before we dive into today's episode, please hit that subscribe button. Your support helps us grow and inspire more people on their journeys. Thank you. Hello Pete, thank you for joining us today and welcome to the show. Yeah, good beer. So Pete, for those who know you, can you please introduce yourself? Yeah, sure. So I am Pete Sena. I am an entrepreneur. I have been building companies for 23 years? I've seen Pete, I read it on your website, a bit of your background,

and it says that you started coding when you were young, dissembling PCs and stuff like this. So when I was hearing that, it sounds to me like one of those biographies that you read or movies that you watch. And I'm sure that it's like a long and exciting story. But can you briefly tell us a bit about yourself when you're younger and tell us some highlights or milestones? Yeah, absolutely.

Well, the first thing I would say is it's not that glamorous of a story. I was just a, you know, 80s baby growing up in Southern Connecticut, which is where I'm from. And I remember when my dad got his income tax check and spent his entire check on buying a computer. And I remember this like this thing just sitting in our house. And that's when my whole life changed. You know, I was a big video gamer at the time. I was just a kid. And I learned that if I wanted to make video games, I would have had to learn how to

code. And if I learned how to code, well, that I need to actually have the games, have artwork or design or interfaces. So it wouldn't just be black screen, green text or white text. So I did whatever, you know, kid back then does, you know, got my hands on a crack copy of Adobe Photoshop. Thanks, Adobe. I paid them lots of money now. And really just kind of taught myself how to design, taught myself how to code, started making video games when I was a kid. And then that's kind of where it began. So not a sexy special story. It was just, I spent way too many years playing N64, and I was like, I want to make video games. And as most of us, you know, we follow our curiosity, and that leads to things. That is true. And what was your idea of your future career back then?

I'll be candid. You didn't have a plan back then. I wanted to be, you know, I wanted to make video games or do something interesting. And then ultimately, I, after school and school, I didn't find the thing I was looking for. So I created something myself. And, you know, ultimately, I always just wanted to be in a creative career where I could, you know, make things that people find useful or interesting. And that's what I dedicated most of my life to. And if I'm not mistaken, you started your business still while at school, right? I did. Yeah. So I had a full-time job and then I managed to convince them to let me use them as a client. So I left as a full-time employee. You know, back then We didn't have side hustles.

It was either you had a job or you worked for yourself. It was one or the other. I don't really like binary. I'm an and guy, not an or guy. And, yeah, I started my first company digital surgeons. Still around to this day. It's a fantastic brand experience firm. We do great design branding.

That was my first company. I started that. I think I was 19. And while I was still at University of Connecticut. So when everyone was watching all the cool basketball games and doing all this stuff and we were winning championships, I was just a punk kid sitting in front of two screens, rattling away. And it's impressive that the business.

is still around, as I had to look as well, it looks great. And since we have audience that are, maybe still at universities or at school or early in their careers, based on your experience, what will be like advice if someone is in a similar situation and they are about to start, like, you know, enter a professional career and maybe start their own business. So you've got a lot of experience and maybe what you learned or based on your career, what would you recommend to people?

Yeah. I think there's a lot of bad advice. there. So the thing that I would say is you have to know yourself first and foremost. And that was something I didn't know. Right. So I didn't really know myself back then. What I knew is that I had this special friend that was the computer. And, you know, nowadays, I think people can learn anything they want on YouTube. They could vibe code whatever they want. If they use chat to Petit or Claude or Gemini or whatever it is, AI has completely changed everything. But back then, like if you asked me my advice 20 years ago, I would say find something that you don't hate doing every single day, because no matter what

you do, it could be the thing you love the most, but it will become work. And there is no such thing as 100% loving what you do every day. Like growth is suffering. Suffering is growth. And whether you want to be a musician or a basketball player or an entrepreneur like I am, all of them come with sacrifices. All of them come with suffering. There's no easy way to go from, you know, zero to billionaire without the suffering. So I think we have to figure out is, you know, what is going to fit for you. Today is very different because I think today we all have access to these little robots in our pockets. And these little robots in our pockets, I think, open up tremendous possibilities. So if I was an entrepreneur today, I think that I could do

everything I've done in 20 years. I could probably do it in like half the time because of what's possible with, you know, AI. I used to have to hire a team of 15 people to do what I can vibe code myself in a terminal in an hour now. I'm not exaggerating. I'm happy to show you or the audience and a follow-up. But that's what I would say to that answer is like just find the thing that you are going to have more good days and bad days and just lean into that and make your own destiny. Whether that means working for somebody else or starting your own thing, everything is in life comes with tradeoffs. So you just have to figure out what tradeoffs work for you. And that's, that's the advice that I would give that I think I can still follow to this day. I like it. And one

concept that stayed with me that I also read on their website is actually to find your own Ikega. Yeah, definitely. And something that makes you excited or gives you like a motivation to obviously wake up in the morning because whether it's building your business, carer showing up on LinkedIn, it's not sunshine and the rainbows every day. Sometimes you feel like it sometimes not. So I'm glad to hear it from someone with such experience. Yeah, it's hard. I mean, I think the reality is no matter who you follow, whatever the creator is that you want to tune into, it is not easy showing up. up every day and doing the reps. The difference between the people that you admire most and where

you are at today in your life, the gap between that is that they did the work and you haven't done it yet. So that's the only reason that they're there where you are. It's often not because they're their talent or their God-given abilities, right? A lot of times it just comes down to they put more reps in than you. You know, when someone's like, oh, I want to be like Al-Tromozy, it's like, well, Al-Trimosie works 90 hours a week. You know, it's like one of those things where we earned every single thing he's done and people see him now but I remember where he was posting awkward YouTube videos getting free views you know and nobody knew he was he was just this bro so yeah that's what I would say I like it and I agree and it's a good example because people see successful

I don't know creators people out there and feels like they happened overnight but no one remembers or no one sees those days when you're showing up and there was no one supporting you know and cheering for you so remember that even those that are way ahead of you they also had to start somewhere And Pete, as we spoke about technology, and obviously it's been, you said, 20 years or how many years, and now we've got AI, as you mentioned before. Did you even have, like, idea before how it's going to develop, how it's going to progress? Obviously, it's been a long time and it's been a lot of progress. But back then, what did you like think about the future, how it's going to develop?

So I've always been a bit of a futurist. I think I take that from science fiction movies, and I'm a big fan of the, the quote from Gibson, the science fiction writer, who says, you know, like, the future's not evenly distributed. You know, we're sort of in many ways. I think many of us live in this small future that the max of everyone else don't live in. But what I would say to that point was, I remember when I first got my hands on a natural language processing, you know, Python model. But it was before we had chat GPT and before we had the LLM, as we know it today. But these transformer models were out there. You know, we had things like Bert from Google.

We had different technologies. And I've always been a big believer that like where things were headed was going to be really interesting. You know, I was an, I had a Tesla when they, when they were earlier in market and promising self-driving, but they were kind of only half self-driving. Now they self-driving themselves, right? I have one now and it's remarkable difference. But that being said, I think I always sort of imagine a world where humans and machines would be working together. If you go back to the Industrial Revolution, you know, the steam train. or steam engine and all these different things,

every machine that man has ever made, we've had to work with, right? We're working with machines right now with no AI on this conversation. So what I know people a lot is, like, I always imagine a world where humans and machines would be working together. I didn't think that we'd be where we're at today so quickly. I thought it was going to take more time, but I'm excited for it. You know, I also thought, they also said we'd have flying cars in the year 2000,

and that didn't happen. So, you know, that's, here we are. We still don't have flying cars yet. At least that I'm over. Of course, yeah. They need to be ambitious and have big goals. And obviously, it's a bit of predicting and to look into the future. But what do you think it's going to look like, I don't know, in years or in decades?

Have you got like any, whether it's development of AI or maybe like a sci-fi life? What do you think? I think in the near future, every person with means is going to, I think, I think, I think unfortunately there's going to be a massive flattening of the economy. Some people will call it the K-shaped economy. I think high agency people that have access to the technology. Like, you know, I think LOM is the new water. LLM is the new electricity in a lot of ways.

But I think that if you have access to this level of compute, if you have access to this level of technology, I think you're going to immediately be separated. So I don't think we're going to have a middle class anymore, at least I live in America, but I don't think we're going to have a middle class. I think we're going to have this sort of like top percentile. It's going to look a lot like District 12 or like Hunger Games or something. I don't mean it's not that dystopian.

I actually take a fairly utopian view of this type of stuff. But what I would say is I think in the future, everyone will have access to personalized healthcare. I think everyone will have access to personalized operating system, you know, personalized software. I think that the where we're headed with a, let's say, artificial general intelligence or augmented general intelligence and, you know, soon to be AGI, or super. are superintelligence. I think that we're all headed to a world

where we're creating the mechanical version of a hive mind that I believe already exists biologically. So I'm a pretty spiritual person. If you think about energy and how the universe works and how nature works, if you study biomimicry, you can see a lot of those principles actually starting to take shape

in the technological landscape. So my philosophy is that if you have access to the means of the technology, I do believe that high agency people will be able to create a number of possibilities that we can't even fathom. A perfect example of that is recently Anthropic launched Claude Science, if you haven't checked it out. Have you seen it? Not Cloud Science. I thought that you mean the model that government restricted. No, that's Fable, which they brought back. Fables on there now. It was actually originally

called Mythos, Fables, the sort of state perversion of it. But putting that aside for a moment, I think they launched Cloud Science. The beauty of Cloud Science is if you have a basic subscription to Claude, which is just a couple dollars a month, most people, you know, it's probably five or six coffees in terms of the clock, right? Again, overpriced coffee for a Starbucks, sorry, but for the cost of four or five coffees, you can have access to cloud science, which gives you access to all of the top research papers and all of the top biological things. So you can have someone on their phone or with a basic internet connection and a pretty

rudimentary computer or a Chromebook using the power of these super cluster computers discovering the next cure for cancer, discovering the next thing. So I think that we're headed towards a world where we will have a personalized one-to-one approach to medicine, to technology, to the purchases that we make. I think that that is definitely going to happen in our lifetimes if we're lucky enough to live that long. That's where you ask the question about futurism. Like that's where I think the futurism is going. I already see it with my ultra high net worth individual friends.

You know, we all have personal agents that are customized to us. that help us with our personal life and our work life. Going on vacation next week, my family, we're going to rural Wyoming, which I've never been to. And my personal agent, not my business agent, went out, built the entire itinerary from scratch, checked the weather every single day,

made the packing list, suggested restaurants based on me and my wife's food preferences, and also talked about where it would be fun places and not fun places to go for my five-year-old son. To say that, that sounds powerful, but, you know, if someone listening to this might be like, okay, cool, what do you have? Is it open clause? Is it an agent? Put the technology aside for a moment.

Think about the time that I would or you would have to spend preparing that in the past, right? In the old world, you'd have to do all that yourself. It would take hours and hours. It'd be frustrating. You'd be Google searching. You'd be pulling all these things up. In the newer world, that I'm privileged to have like an assistant that can do that work for me, but that would also take a ton of her time, right? So instead of eating up her time, spending a whole day making an itinerary, I'm able to, from my car, send a voice note to my agent, which then goes and does all this work for me. So that's where we're headed is that every person is going to have that level of agency in their own life with their technology.

And I don't think it's going to be something that only the wealthy and 1% have access to. So that's where I think you're headed. I do think that there's a light side and a dark side to anything, right? So I think that in a lot of ways, I have a lot of concern for security, privacy, you know, the sovereign nature of AI. I worry quite a bit about Thomas, to be totally candid. But I'm also as a builder. I'm extremely excited because while you and I are having this conversation in this podcast,

I have seven different projects that are being worked on by independent agents in the cloud and just working. And that would be the equivalent of like a 30-person team in the past. And these are ideas, right? Like we still need people to create amazing things, but I can experiment rapidly now. you can experiment rapidly now with these technologies. You can use something like Riverside to cut and clip the content on this

to hopefully find one interesting thing I'd say today. Well, there will be so many. It will be hard to find to go through all of those. But you actually kind of answered it because I was about to ask you that you mentioned many positives and good things, but I was about to ask you about kind of the darker scenarios. Because sometimes it also may look like, I'm sure that you know TV series, Black Mirror, so like some kind of scenarios like that. But you then answer it that you see it both from positive side and also, of course, some negatives as well.

I think any technology that we've ever had from fire to electricity to the Internet all comes with good and bad. I think humanity in its purest form is going, you know, we can choose to pick up something and use it as a device to open worlds or we can choose to look at a technology to destroy worlds. You know, think of the ability to study and do things at the subatomic level, right? On one hand, we're creating nuclear bombs that destroy people. On the other hand, we're being able to have breakthroughs in medicine to save people's lives. Same technology just with a different mindset and a different application. So I think I'm the most excited about right now is how can we use our agency, how can we use our technology, how can we use this to design the art of possible?

And that's where the magic happens is in the art of possible, but it all starts up here through the lens we look through. I like it. And I like the mindset and approach to kind of both sides. And as you are discussing this, Pete, and of course you are very knowledgeable about this field, not only theoretically but practically as well. It makes me wonder, how do you manage to keep up with everything,

not only to know it, but also to test it by yourself and don't be overwhelmed by all the news and updates. Well, you asked a couple questions. Let me break those down. For one, I am overwhelmed. I'm overwhelmed all the time. I've had ADHD since I was a kid. I was born with it.

And so my brain is naturally like a squirrel being pulled to different things or a laser pointer to a cat. I'm all like this. So I am overwhelmed all the time. And to answer your question on how I do it, I have developed a set of ways that I will consume, ways that I will curate, ways that I'll capture things, getting things out of my brain into my second brain, which I use a lot of technology for. But the way I stand top of things is, one, I hire amazing, incredible people, right? Those people tell me what to pay attention

to. That's number one. Number two is, I've just been really efficient with technology. You know, anyone that has access to these technologies now, you can set up and tell your agents what you want to pay attention to. So whether you use, you know, chat jebcotech or Klaude's co-work or, you know, whatever you want to use. Any tool can do these kinds of things for you now. They have access the internet, they can go pull things and, you know, read newsletters and tell you what's on top of. So what I tell people all the time and, you know, is where your focus goes, your energy flows, right? So for me, I focus on innovation. I focus on possibility. So a while that comes to me, innovation possibility. But that's how I stand top of things is, you know,

just a very mindful approach to where I put my time and attention. I am a habitual reader. I love to read. I love to experiment. I'm a tinkerer. So, you know, my vocation is my vacation. You know, So my favorite Mark Twain quote to Thomas, he said, you know, find where your vocation and your vacation are the same thing and you've had a good life, right? And that's for me, my work and my personal life have a lot of overlapping things. You know, I make things for fun. I'm a tinker. I'm a builder. So I'm able to stay in that zone of genius. You know, you mentioned the concept, you guy, which is a concept that comes from Japan. It's sort of been bastardized by business people like ourselves. So I want to be clear. I'm not trying to appropriate someone else's culture here. But what I would say, is Ikigai, you know, loosely translated to raison d'etra or your reason for being, when looked at it in its purest form, is all about this idea of where you had value for your community, what lights you up, what brings you that positive energy. That was a sort of original text as it was designed. I think us business people have bastardized it and said, okay, what do you love to do? What does the world need? And what will people pay you for? And

we found a different Venn diagram because business people, we just love Venn diagrams, right? We're just a little too high in our own supply. But I think for me, that purpose is really about possibility. It's about elevating human potential. And one of the things I love about you, Tom, is why I accepted this podcast thing was just, you know, the authentic nature of how you reached out. You know, it wasn't a spammy AI written message.

I get hundreds of those a day. It was a genuine reality. You know, and that's why I was like, yeah, let's talk. But if it was, you know, one of those spammy things, it would have never even came to me. So I think the future is about human creativity, collaboration. That's how I stand top of the world, and that's how I bring the passion. I bring to everything I do.

I want to say, firstly, thank you. I really appreciate it. And I like the concept that you discuss and you mentioned, because it's obviously very important to have your why that, as mentioned before, makes you excited to wake up in the morning in the first place. And one of my favorite things to just keep in mind is to enjoy the journey. You said that you are a thinker, that you like to explore, be creative and have fun. And if you have fun, if you enjoy it, it just makes everything more enjoyable and easier to show up.

So I think I like your mindset and the way you approach it. Thanks. No, I appreciate that. I mean, I think mindset's everything, right? We can choose to be happy or we can choose to be unhappy. And the way I look at is there's a really great book that I love, Victor Frankel's Mancerch for Meaning. And it's a beautiful book about like suffering, right? You know, the guy's in a concentration camp who one of the most affordable possible things that could happen.

And he finds joy in just looking out into the church. trees or you find joy and happiness. So I think, you know, my philosophy, I try, you know, I meditate every day. I try my best to have the right mindset. But like, let's be honest, like we all have shitty days. We all kind of get stuck in our own bullshit, you know, like, oh, I spilled my $4 coffee on myself. It's like, do you hear yourself right now? And sometimes we just have to snap out of it. But yeah, listen, you know, I try to be one percent better every day. I try to show up. I try to own my shit. And plenty of that, as my wife will tell you. But yeah, that's a, that's a. I like it and I think it's a great inspiration for me as well.

A quick note before we continue. One of the things I've realized from hosting this podcast is that I spent a lot of time thinking about the conversations long after they end. That's one of the reasons I started unproduced, a solo podcast where I share ideas, lessons, observations and questions I'm still figuring out myself. If you'd like to check it out, you'll find a list. link in the description. Now, back to the episode. And Pete, we discussed your business before and now AI, but I know that you are involved in

multiple ventures or multiple roles. So to give us a perspective and to let the audience know, what are some other projects or businesses that you are involved in. Yeah. So for those that aren't aware, so I have a holdings company, which is basically just a fancy, rich person term for you own a bunch of companies and you can't nick up your fucking mind. That's what it translates too. But the jokes aside, I have, I've been building out what I refer to as a hub and spoke model of companies for a long time, which is essentially, you know, when you think about, again, I'm here in America, so I know we have an audience all over the world, but why did Amazon buy Whole Foods, right? They bought them because they needed physical distribution hubs, right, for their

e-commerce business. They bought them for a number of other reasons. You know, why does the company that does a lot of shipping buy a shipping company? Because they can sort of control the whole ecosystem, If you control the ecosystem, you control the customer journey, control the customer across the board, right? So the more you can lever it, the better. That being said, I started as a brand experience firm, digital surgeons, still exist to this day. We do work with amazing, incredible companies. In doing branding and storytelling, I realized we need a development capabilities. So we built on a technology company.

And then I realized we need consulting capabilities. So then we both on a consulting capability. One of things I learned about myself in 20 years of being an entrepreneur is that it's better to be in my In my mind, I'm a jack of all trades, master of none. So what I like to do is find the experts in each related thing. So it's your question. One of my newest companies, it's about a year old now. I've been at this company for, you know, in some ways you have performed as an investor or

collaborator for a few years. But I basically in building a company called GPC. GPC is an AI consulting company. It has two sides to it. So we have the number one AI education newsletter on the internet. So my partner, Rubenaseed, has hot AI on substack. So that's our AI education. We put out a ton of free material to people all over the world.

We're reaching, I think, about a million people each week right now with a combined list of over 800,000. And that number will grow even faster based on its current trajectory. So we took that business combined with another business that we had together, which is AI consulting. So what GPC is we help companies adopt AI. So what we do is we come in and we train, adopt, deploy, maintain AI solutions. And what I mean is not just like fancy AI agents and like the bullshit they'd about a thing. It's like, we come in, we sit down with a company, we understand how they do business, and we help them redesign the future of work. And we do that through a mix of people and process

and platforms. And that company is growing like crazy right now. We just, you know, we're hiring tons of people, you know, we're signing the biggest companies in the world and helping them reimagine work because AI is not another technology. AI is a fundamental shift in how we behave as human beings. the way that the future of labor used to be human capital, now the future of labor is leverage and leverage is about human capital, token capital, and the combined interchange of value exchange. And that's why we're seeing, you know, for a few person billion dollar valuations in companies now, because what's possible, if you have the right leverage, you don't require, you know, thousands of people like you did 100 years ago, right? Now, let's be clear.

Anybody who tells you you're going to have AI-only companies, they're wrong, right? We need people because humans have taste, discernment, and judgment. And these machines still require a lot of that. We're always away off from the super AI you hear about in Black Mirror that can do everything and be the CEO of its own company. I don't think we're there yet. I hope I'm dead by then. Maybe you'll live forever by then.

Who one never knows? I don't know. I saw something that the guy was his name, the Brian Johnson guy apparently is. Oh, he's got some, he's sick, right? I saw it, I think, today. Yeah, he's sick right now, which is kind of a bummer to hear that, because I think a lot of us looked out and were like, oh, he's figured out a way to figure it all out.

I really enjoyed that Netflix documentary. Certainly an interesting way to live your life, but I hope he gets well soon. I think so. And it's probably obvious question, but you said that business is growing because of the AI. And how do you see that for the future? Do you think it's going to grow even more

as people realize that AI is growing and it's important because sometimes people think, oh, it's late to jump to AI, which I think it's never late. But what's your... We're in the first inning of this, Thomas. I mean, we haven't even started yet. When it comes to where we're at with the AI workforce, I think that the shift that we're having right now that's currently happening, it's very easy to read a headline and think that everyone's an AI.

I walked into a 3,000 person or a few thousand person company the other day. for one of our clients. And I go and I wrote about my newsletter if you, if you haven't followed it, check it out. I have a free newsletter on Substack. We'll definitely drop a link for the folks. But basically my write every Tuesday and, you know, essentially I go to a company and I'm thinking I'm going to go talk about context

engineering and all this other fancy stuff. And literally a person raises their hand and is like, you know, asks the most basic question. And I was floored because in my mind, I'm like, this is the most innovative company. They have all these AI products. They do all these things. And there's so many people who don't understand it.

So I think that the reality is the promise of AI and what AI actually delivers, the gap and the space in between right now, it's not technology. It's adoption. It's an understanding fundamentally of how work and how value gets created. And I think that that's what we have to really focus on first is like what is the nature of work and how is work changing? Because the answer is not replace a human with a robot. The answer is not replace a workflow with an automation. the answer is understanding how does a company create value, right? All a company is at the most basic level is revenue, profit, costs, capital.

What is the capital? Human capital, financial capital, token capital. You need customers buying something. It's a product, it's a service, it's an experience. There's an exchange of value, right? If you think about currency, the root word of current, If you go back to the etymology back in the day, language, root current is to flow. If something doesn't change hands or flow, it's not value.

And that is why the basic economic principles, supply, demand, equilibrium, these are concepts we've learned about in school that are very, very important. But most people don't want to talk about those things because they sound too smart. So what they want to do is they want to say, like, how do you make money? How do you 10x your people? And that's where I think that we have to reimagine what is work. And based on your experience, how do people usually react to AI? Because there's like some people that are afraid of it, obviously,

because they fear that it's going to take their job. Everyone is afraid of AI, Thomas. I'm afraid of AI, you're afraid of it. And if you say otherwise, you're lying. We're all afraid of it because right now you either feel threatened by it, you feel thrilled by it, or there's a thing that's... Yeah, exactly. It's likely both.

we are all afraid of AI, myself included, right? It's these things are able to do so many more things way better, way faster, way cheaper than we can do as humans. So what we have to understand is, you know, the painter hated the photographer, the photographer hated the Photoshopper, the Photoshopper hates the AI generated image, right? We're in this thing now where your generation, you look a bit younger than me, your generation hates overproduced content that I look at, you know, the 8K perfect stuff, perfect makeup.

You want real, you want authentic, right? And then Gen Alpha doesn't want to see AI slop. They don't want to see AI-generated content. They want to see pitfalls and mistakes and, you know, things falling down all over the place, right? So I think what's happening is that people are revolting against AI in a lot of cases. So I think that like anything, everything in life is about moderation. It's about finding and tuning the dials on what's right for you, what's right for your customer, what's right for your business, what's right for your market. And I don't believe

that they are identical anywhere. I like it. That's interesting. And also, you don't obviously know how it's going to progress, how it's going to evolve. We discuss something. When I've seen a few months or years, it may be completely different. So it was interesting, like, for sure. Yeah. And one of my favorite quotes on this is we overestimate what we can do in a year and underestimate what we can, sorry, we overestimate what we can do in 10 years and underestimate what we can do a one. Yeah. I think it's a Bill Gates quote.

Again, I'm not sure who said it, but someone's smarter than me said it for sure. Yeah. And Pete, we could be discussing that for way longer, but something that I definitely need to ask is obviously podcasting because that's my passion as well. So you've spoken with some amazing guests on your show. If I'm not mistaken, you probably took a little break from podcasting. It's my friend. Yeah.

So the short version is we had a great podcast called Ford of. We started remotely and brought it in person post-COVID. We, myself and one of my co-founders, one of my other companies. We got busy. He was having, him and his wife were having new kids. We're both running different businesses at the time. We're here in New Haven, Connecticut, so we were preferring to record in-person. And just the energy of it, right?

You know, I think right now we had a fantastic producer who I absolutely adore. And then him and his wife moved to Germany. When they moved, we tried to do a remote for a little bit. I did a couple of remote episodes. I haven't quite figured out energy. that I'm after yet, and it was a bit of a lost leader. So, yeah, we did take a bit of a break. So I've been doing much more guest appearances,

which is what brings me here today, today. But I love podcasting, love conversations like we're having today. We'd be thinking about this chat for the rest of the day, so thank you for that. But yeah, the plan is probably to start it back up again in the future, but right now I've been really enjoying having the extra space to do other things. Compute the under. I was about to ask, how can you manage everything? The answer to that is hire great people.

Yeah, it is true. And have you got like a dream guest? Because, for example, from the people that you've spoken with, some bar is someone who's well-known such a big name, but who's like your dream guest or favorite guest? It's a wonderful question. I mean, dream guests, I mean, I think it's pretty obvious, right? I would love to have Jensen Huang on an episode.

I'd love to have Elon Musk on the show, Sam Altman, Dario, philanthropic, all these sort of breakthrough minds. You know, I'd love to have folks like Sarah Blakely, you know, creator of Spank, she's brilliant. You know, Whitney, who's, you know, the, I think she was the founder of Tinder and then Bumble, just like understanding how different folks are doing that. So I think for me, it's less about the names and it's more about the way that people think, right? So I would be delighted to have a scientist on the show that's doing work in cancer care and helping with that,

but you've never heard of them. Like, in my experiences, some of the best conversations I've had happened at the grocery store or at a coffee shop. And you would never know who those people are. They don't have a million followers on Instagram, but it's just a raw human conversation. So I think one of the things that's challenging about the podcast business is you're chasing views if you're trying to do it. So when my partner and I did it, we did it as a labor of love. We weren't really selling a ton of sponsors.

We did a couple occasional sponsorships here and there, but it's expensive for on a podcast. I think we were probably, we were spending, you know, we spent a good amount of money every year to do it. I mean, it was some salaries and some tech. and then your own time. But yeah, I hope that is what you're looking for. You know, of course. And I can obviously mentioned like finances,

but also times and management and everything around it. I know what it's like. So it's actually great to hear it from someone who's got experience. And Pete, one of the questions that people sometimes ask me is like, for example, like one piece of advice or something like a recurring theme or pattern that you see across the guests.

So if I was to ask you this question, as someone who spoke with many people on the podcast, is there like one takeaway that you would give to people that you learned? You got to be more specific. That's a very open-ended question. It's like, let's say you spoke with many amazing people and maybe is there like one recurring theme that you see across multiple episodes

that helps people to progress in career in their life, maybe be happier? I think it comes down to mindset and agency. Those are the two words that I would say. You know, the mindset that you operate under will free you or will trap you, the how high agency you are will mean your ability to shape your own reality around you. I would say mindset agency is how I would answer that question, period. If I had to add another sentence to that, what I would say is know thyself, first and foremost.

Self-awareness is mission critical, I think, to anyone successful. You know, the more self-aware you are, the less delusional you are, the more likely you will be able to function in society for whatever it might be. That's where I would start primarily. What I've noticed, especially with entrepreneurs and having somebody on my show, a lot of them went through different mental health challenges. You know, like I said, a lot of suffering, sometimes self-imposed. Chips on shoulders equals chips in pockets, right?

So every entrepreneur I know, we feel like we have something to prove to ourselves, to our families, to the world, to the X. you know, that scorned us, you know, whatever it is. We're all out to prove something. You know, I think fear, fear, greed, and love drive human primal behavior. So if you understand how to play with the levers of fear, greed and hopefully love more than fear and greed, you know, anything's possible. It might not be overnight, but anything's possible. So, yeah, that's what I would say.

I like it. And I also like what you said because it's worth reminded that even those people that are successful or that are way ahead of you are still just people that also have fears, have, you know, insecure. it is doubt. Everyone does that. So it's good to know that from those that are way ahead of you. Yeah. Then Pete, just to be aware of time, I want to ask you kind of lighter questions. So what is it actually that you like doing in your free time or what are some of your hobbies? I love spent on my son. I have a five-year-old son. I love family. My wife's awesome. We travel a lot. We love experiences. I'd say outside of family, I'm really big into art, design, and technology. So I love to play with the intersection of art design and technology,

whether it's through exploring new AI technologies, vibe coding. I do spend a lot of time vibe coding these days. It's just a really fun way to kind of express myself, make ideas in my head come real. Those are mostly my hobbies. I mean, I'd say for me, it's spend time with friends, spend time vibe coding. You know, I don't think I have any extraordinary hobbies. I wouldn't call meditation a hobby. I'd call meditation on a thoughtful practice. That's a part of life but I have been meditating for you know thousands of days in a row consecutively I'm very proud of that I think I'm going on about nine years of not missing a day and that's that's a big accomplishment for me given what got me into that and that's

really if you don't mind expanding on it a bit more is it like you do for example few minutes in the morning or in the evening or what's your approach to meditation it depends I'd say when I'm in my best I'm doing it two times a day but I'd say my daily practice typically is when I'm done for the day. Usually I'll do a sit at night. You know, ideally it's like 20 minutes, but sometimes I'd say the lowest I've done is just a couple minutes just to make sure I'm keeping up the, I call it the Cinderella habit, making sure I don't turn to a pumpkin. But I try to, I make sure that I meditate every day before the clock strikes midnight. And it's a big part of my practice. I'd say it's mostly mindfulness meditation. I've

been recently exploring Zazen and TM as well. But I'd say right now, but I'd say right now, now I get a lot of value out of just like a relaxed sit. Recently I've recently purchased an infrared sauna and I've been doing it in the sauna, which is a little bit harder to get the true Zen-like behavior when you're sweating your face off. But I've definitely been appreciating that combination of kind of sweating out the toxins and that sort of thing. You know, I would say I'm very much a big fan of contrast therapy.

So I think what's really awesome for me is like I don't have a cold plunge in my house. But right now I'm probably going to be. get one soon, but, you know, so on a cold plunge meditation for me is like a trifecta. A little life hack that I've been doing, Thomas, that you might appreciate is like trying to get at least an hour a day that's just for me. So not for my family, not for my clients, not for my team, but just for me. I don't always get that hour by itself. Sometimes it's 15 minutes here or 15 minutes there, but I try to add those things up where

an hour for me a day is my time. And that's been helping my mental health. It's been helping my moods, my attitude. But yeah, everything's work in progress. I like it, and it's a great reminder. Don't underestimate or neglect your mental health, because if you cannot function, nothing is really going to work. And I'm proud of you about this trick, so well done on that.

Yeah, I'll keep it up, for sure. And I just wanted to say that when you mentioned before technology, creativity, and that you like building things, I can safely say that looking at whether it's ventures or businesses or any projects that you create it. When I look at whether it's website or presents on social media, it always looks like really beautiful. Top-notch websites, beautiful design. So you are a real pro and I'm a big fan. I really, well done.

I really appreciate that. Yeah, I know it's, like I said, I have an amazing team and I'm just obsessed with great design. I think that there's not enough beauty in this world. And I think we need more of it if we pay attention. So I'm just doing my best to try to put it out there. Really, well done. And you mentioned it before, Pete, but what are some? of your favorite books.

Well, we'll need a separate podcast just for that. So I'm a huge, huge fan of Rick Rubin's book, The Creative Act. I'm a big, there's so many books. I mean, I love shud-do, I love biographies or autobiography, so I love memoir type books. So Shoe Dog was a great one from Phil Knight about a story with Nike. I love the, I love almost any biography. Walter Isaacson writes, you know, whether it's the Steve Jobs biography or whatever. I'm a big, big fan of kind of stepping into the minds of people that are interesting from all walks and talks of life, not just one industry.

So those are some great books. What other books? Yeah, there's the classic ones. You know, Jim Collins, good to great. I think it's a fantastic book. I'm trying to make sense. Search for a meeting before. Yeah, that was a good book.

I wouldn't say one of my favorites. That book was, like, hard to read because it was like, something to me to be sad. But, but, yeah, that book tracks. There's a lot of authors I follow. I mean, one of my partners in our venture studio that we built an app for him is Matthew Dix, the famous author, and he wrote, you know, StorySell and Storyworthy. I think those books are fantastic books that anyone that wants to connect with people deeper should read because they're basically like life books about business, not business books about life.

So I think they're really good. I highly recommend his stuff. But yeah, I know. I wish I was in my other office because I have a whole bookcase behind that. I could have just been calling them out. But, yeah, those are those ones. But it makes one wonder if it's also on your mind to write your own book one day. I am writing a book right now.

Oh, wow. I'm writing a book right now. It's all around the topic of the lens and how you can shift the lenses that you look through. So that's been something, you know, I'm pretty deep into that book right now. I haven't decided if I'm going to self-publish or go with a publisher. So if you are a publisher and you see this and you're interested in that book, I am basically taking 20 years of my stories, my journey, and also the research I've done on how anyone can be creative and anyone can change and transform their life by changing the mindset and the lens that they look through. So I do, I've been building

a series of apps and a stack around that and also been deeply writing that the old fashioned way. And that's, that's been great. But yeah, no, thank you for asking. I'm going to be launching that soon. And I'd say for those that are wanting to get a glimmer into my mind, not a hard sell here because it's a, it's a free newsletter too. I have free tier and a paid tier. free tier is great. I write up substack, you know, just pizza on substack. I write that, you know, every Tuesday it's been going out. And that's been keeping me honest in a lot of ways. And I've been enjoying that. And I think you'll find a glimmer of some of the things to come and what the book is going to be about. I'm happy to hear that. Firstly, impressed

the child writing the book, well done, and will be excited when it's out. And as you mentioned, substack, I was about to ask if you can summarize or mention where people can find you, follow you and potentially promote any of our services as well. No, I appreciate that. You know, again, I'm just grateful for you listening to this interview and for supporting Thomas, but I would say how you can support me is follow me on substack. I'm pizza on on substack. I'm pizza on on LinkedIn, pizza on Twitter.

So mostly pizza on most channels. I'd say the best channel to connect with me is probably LinkedIn or Substack because I check those very actively and often. I'm a longtime Twitter lover. Obviously, go on X almost every day. I'm not posting as much as I'd like to anymore. on there, but I do have a decent following over there that I want to reactivate. But yeah, I just really want to say thanks for the support.

Thanks for having me on and excited to see the episode. I thank you, Pete. But before I let you go, please, one more question. If there is anything I forgot to ask you or anything that you would like to leave the audience with. No, I think you nailed them, yeah. Thank you. I thank you.

I appreciate it. Not only I enjoy the content that you create, obviously, big inspiration with everything that you created. Now this chat only confirmed it. I also really like your mindset and everything. Thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed it. And I'll be wishing you all the best.

And one day, I'll be looking forward to seeing your books on the shelves. So thank you very much, Pete. Thank you so much. I'll make sure you get a copy of it. I wonder when it's ready. Thanks for listening to Produce Buy with Tomin. Check the show notes for all the links. And don't forget to subscribe, like and share your feedback.

Speak soon.