The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Michael Pink, CEO of SmartPM Automated Project Controls™ and Schedule Analytics Software Interview

Episode Date: June 6, 2023

Michael Pink, CEO of SmartPM Automated Project Controls™ and Schedule Analytics Software Interview Smartpmtech.com Founded in 2016 by industry analytics experts, SmartPM Technologies Inc. is the leading construction project analytics provider headquartered in Atlanta. SmartPM™ launched its cloud based software in 2019 and is the only schedule analytics solution designed specifically for the construction industry by industry experts. SmartPM drives project management with essential data from the construction schedule and then analyzes it via proprietary Schedule Intelligence™ Technology, automating time-consuming project and schedule reviews while extracting meaningful insights to reduce delays and overruns. By detecting problems before they arise, SmartPM keeps projects on time, on budget and out of court.

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working but you know whatever we're also on instagram as well uh anyways we have an amazing gentleman on the show he's gonna be talking to us about uh some of the software he developed and some of the ways that he helps construction get done better and software and being an entrepreneur and we're gonna talk about everything damn it everything on the show or try to something like that we only have an hour half an hour 45 minutes, but Michael Pink is joining us today. He's the CEO of Smart PM. He's got over 20 years of construction analysis and analytics experience. His passion lies in transforming the industry through data.

Welcome to the show, Michael. How are you? I'm well. How are you? I'm well. How are you? I am excellent today. I'm just having a great time and it's an honor to have you here. Thank you. Give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs, please. Yeah, we are www.smartpmtech.com. There you go. And give us an overview. What does your company do? So we analyze data in construction, commercial construction, primarily the scheduled data. So, you know, when building a construction project, there's a process for scheduling the project.

There's a big usual schedule file that gets created and updated through all of construction. We have a computer system that analyzes that data set. And that data set is, to me, one of the most powerful data sets to do a number of different things as it relates to gauging performance and risk and impacts and problems and using it to forecast. And that's what we do. It's just a time-consuming process that I used to do manually. And now we have a computer system that does it and it provides all sorts of value to our customers. You mean those construction buildings, those commercial buildings just don't go up like magic? I thought, you know, like one day I look over and there's nothing there.

Some would think that they just pop right up, but there's all sorts of people and equipment crawling around trying to build these things on time and on budget. And the industry falls short in that category of getting them done on time and on budget. And there's always a story. And we want to extract that story and understand that story as it's going. There you go. When did you start your company? How many years ago? I started Smart PM, it was 2016.

This is after I came off the heels of a consulting business that I was running as an analyst. I wanted to do analytics in a more proactive way to what I was doing prior to that. And then one thing led to another, and we started building technology to help facilitate a better process. And then that technology took on a life of its own. We opened up a technology company to provide this directly to the customers as opposed to being the user of the technology. Was this your first company you started? The one prior to the technology was, yeah, it was. I was a consultant for a number of years prior to that at various firms like Deloitte and KPMG and some others. But yeah, that was my first real company that I'd started.

There you go. So give us a little bit of origin story. What got you in this line of business and down this road? Were you just born with Tonka trucks? No, honestly, I wasn't thinking about the construction industry when I graduated college. I actually ended up getting into a construction company as a part-time job in college to make some money. I was an industrial engineer, which is essentially an engineer who helps build better processes, optimize processes, you know, add efficiencies to various things. And, you know, you can go into many, many different fields at the time, supply chain, logistics, you know, that sort of thing was a popular thing, setting up manufacturing facilities to be profitable was the common job. But my first job since I had worked in construction was at a company called KPMG, which is a large accounting firm, but also had a consulting practice where I was essentially a forensic analyst of projects that had essentially gone

bad or gotten over budget or delayed. Wasn't necessarily what I was looking to get into, but it was a good opportunity up in New York City. That's where I'm from, up in New York. And I took the job with the idea that if I didn't really like what I was doing, I could move around. But it became very interesting to me because, you know, as a person who was trained to fix broken processes and add efficiencies and walking into the construction industry on the back end after problem projects, it was started to spark my brain a little bit on, you know, what are all these? Why are all these projects leading over budget? What do you do about that?

And that's really what pushed me into where I am now. I used to have a thing in my business that I used to, you know, I had a mortgage company for about 20 years. And the problem with the mortgage company is everyone's kind of a vendor, like you're the big fish, well, and maybe the mortgage lenders are, but you're kind of the big fish and you're relying on all these different vendors, you know, the credit report, the appraisals and all that stuff. And imagine the construction business is like the same. You're trying to build a thing. You got the construction workers, inspectors, you know, concrete guys, the mob you got to deal with. No,

wait, that was the nineties in New York. Um, maybe it still is. I don't know. Uh, but, uh, I remember I think in the nineties, the eighties and nineties, you couldn't pour, you couldn't pour cement without the mob. But, uh, so you gotta, you know, you gotta work that whole thing. You know, uh,

what was, what was the Don's name? Uh, John, uh, what is anyway? Got it. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, so, you know, you gotta work all that thing. You know,

you gotta go to Marlon Brando and be like, I need a favor. Um, but no, I'm just kidding, but you gotta, you know, you got so many moving parts that you've

got a nailed down schedule and so it's like project management only did you find that back then when you started in the business you know everything was manual there really wasn't any software to it no there was scheduling software um and there the problem the question was at the time, why with all these processes and all these plans, what actually ended up happening? Because the interesting thing about construction, to your point, is yes, there are a ton of moving parts. And these are big, big things that they're building that are going to take a long time. The interesting part was they've agreed to a price and a timeline before the project even started. And they've put together a plan before actually hiring, you know, every single sub that's going to be involved, all the vendors, they've actually

committed to a plan and a budget. And then they've also gotten started and started trying to pull all these parts and pieces together. But lo and behold, most of the time it took longer and it cost more money. And that was where the consultant would come in and help them sort of navigate. Well, why did that happen? But, yeah, that was part of the problem that we saw was, you know, first of all, scheduling products have been around for, you know, 40 years since like actually the 50s. But the real technology was, you know, the technology that they're using today was first brought out to the market in the late 70s, early 80s on desktop computers. And, you know, what you notice from that data set is that they don't necessarily manage the process right, right? There's a way to build a schedule well, first of all, but not everybody knows how to do that. Very

few people actually know how to build a schedule that's worthy of managing a job. So, you know, that's the first problem we solve is, okay, let me look at your data and make sure that your schedule is following best practices. But then once you get there there that's when you can start to analyze progress and performance for what it is and that's the next thing that we do but those things hadn't been around on top of these scheduling platforms for a very long time so that was the manual piece was taking that schedule data and making sense of it and making sure that it was built well and vetted and and everybody agreed it, but then following an updating process with some analytics weaved in so that you know how you're doing, which was non-existent as well in those programs. Does that make sense? It sure does. It sounds like everyone's still

using Microsoft Project Manager from 2000, right? Yeah, Project or Primavera, it's an Oracle product. There's really two big ones. There's a couple other companies out there that are popular in other parts of the world and or newer versions of similar tools that do scheduling. But very few products out there that are actually being utilized. And Oracle and Microsoft probably cover 95% of the market or 90% of the market. So where did you see a way for you to innovate, for you to create a special lane that gives you an edge? So we, well, it just happened because I was doing it manually.

So when I get involved in a project, usually it was halfway through and they're like, where are we headed? What's going on? Are we on track? Are we off track? If we're off track, what do we need to do? Or it could be even at the end of the job where the project took too long and it cost too much money and they were arguing over money. What I just found after doing that for a number of years was that I kept going to the same place to find out what happened. And that was the schedule data. That was, you know, the quickest way to get me to understand where they started

and what happened over time and how that translated into delays and overruns or being able to understand the state of a job midway through and use that historical information to predict outcomes was all the best data I could find was that scheduled data. And that's where, you know, I just got really in tune with that information. I realized that, you know, people were calling me because they didn't know how to read that stuff. They didn't know how to analyze that stuff. And I just learned that, you know, if there's any place to really learn about a construction project or even looking at multiple projects for a program, you get into that schedule data and the amount of information and knowledge that you can gain that will support better outcomes or at least break

down the problems that can be utilized, you know, forensically or prospectively for gauging risk or predicting risk was all in that schedule data. The problem was it took, you know, weeks, if not months at a time for me to analyze that. But having done it enough, I just was wired to think about automation, right? Like, how do I don't want to do this anymore. I don't like locking myself in an office for two months and ripping through schedules in my late 20s now into early 30s. I'm done with this stuff. Going down to check if Bob nailed in the nails. Yeah. Let's get some computer to do this. Actually, what kept me engaged in this monotonous task was constantly thinking about ways that, you know, the things that I was doing, for whatever reason it was with the scheduled data, if and how I did it, if that could be automated, how would I approach solving this problem that may actually help add efficiencies into an industry that needs it, you know, pretty badly.

There you go. Would you call this a SaaS service? Yes. Yes. Our product is software as a service. People purchase our product and load their data directly into the system, and it starts pumping out analytics in real time. And then as new data sets come, they add it into there,

and it just keeps giving you feedback at that moment in time for each project that you're on and giving, you know, various levels of analytics. You know, one of the whole other big issues was that even if one person in your organization can do what I can do, that's one person that needs to then go translate all the data to other people. And there's various hierarchy in an organization starting with the executives getting down through management and then ultimately into the site teams they all need to be speaking the same language and they all need to be understanding this information to collaborate effectively and that doesn't that's not just for the contractor that's between owner

and contractor so being able to then take that information and put it in a way that people can understand without knowing how to do the actual analysis is the second piece of what we do ah so you deliver it in a plain language i'm looking at some graphs on your website here and uh you know you've got different bar graphs and different other variations that can give people breakdown on how things are going so you guys make automated project controls and schedule analytics software it leverages billions billions i should have like a carl sagan uh soundboard on that billions of data points hidden in the schedule to automate it and project reviews and this can save companies risk uh mitigate risk control costs and increase profitability

how do you how do you accomplish that well i mean first and foremost you know setting up a project from the get-go to be managed effectively using that program like i said that program's mismanaged 80 something percent of the time which which means if people are following that, that scheduling program and it's not built well, it's prone to making bad decisions along the way. So just from the get go, we minimize the risk of mismanagement and how to quantify that. Usually we quantify it by looking at, you know, what sort of improvements you get on your outcomes. Most projects are, I would say most companies finish their projects 10% to 15% late. And we are trying to pull that into getting done on time and or early. We've got several customers that went from being months late on average,

which costs anywhere between $200,000 to $300,000 a month, and in some cases millions a month just for their indirect costs if you can cut that time off the end and get done on time you're going to reach your budget of indirect costs now in addition to that if and when you're late and and and or inefficient with the subcontractors. The subs becoming inefficient can result in claims. Being late can result in a claim. Having that claim and hiring attorneys and consultants like myself, you know, to defend yourself or to argue the points for that claim is a cost in and of itself.

So really, those are the things that we're honed in on is if you can get your projects done on time, you're not at risk of being over budget. And if you are over budget, you have all the information necessary to prove it, prove the why and the how without having to hire the lawyers and the consultants. And that's just for the construction side. You know, if you think about the owner's side, when the construction company's on the hook for the overrun or the delay, they will ask the owner to pay for it. But the owner's also losing out on the intended use of that asset. So they're losing revenue. It's kind of a double whammy, which is how we can sell to both owners and contractors because they're both at risk of a problem to their business.

And by using a tool like ours, we're not only documenting the story and giving you good analytics to make better decisions along the way to minimize that risk, but we're also getting you closer to done on time, if not even ahead of schedule in most cases, as well as minimizing that risk of any sort of dispute or argument or claim yeah i know i know on construction projects if you piss off the subcontractors and stuff they can file lawsuits and then file liens and stop work production and yeah there's even more delays and so yeah keeping everybody happy through the whole process can really help make all the difference. And it's amazing you can save that sort of money.

One of the things you were talking about in your blog, I noticed, was this topic of forensic delay analysis is archaic in construction. Tell us a little about that. I mean, why have they been able to keep up with that? Well, the industry, like I said, nobody's come up with a solution really truly to help people get done on time and on budget. I think most solutions can add a part or a piece to the equation of making sure that you get your projects done, managed more efficiently. But at the end of the day, we still see the same problems. We still see the same percentages of projects getting done late and over budget as we did 50 years ago. So that big problem needs to be resolved.

But in the last 40 years, since they started using these scheduling programs, the way in which they've been managing that process isn't by solutioning it. It's been by, you know, coming up with arguments at the end of the day to ultimately place blame. Place blame. Yeah, which is what I did. No, exactly. There was nobody, nobody really truly knew always why this happened. There's a lot of opinions, there's bias, but there was never any data to support, you know you know well contractor says it was the owner's fault or contractor said it was the electrician's fault or the electrician said it was the concrete guy's fault you know that was always happening and all it happens in every project i mean yeah frankly it's projects late and over budget somebody's got a reason but they haven't actually done an analysis and usually because there's so much at stake

millions of dollars both from the overrun as well as the lost profits um there's usually a back and forth of well i didn't cause this you caused this because somebody's got to pay for it and normally nobody wants that ball when you're talking millions of dollars you don't want to split it yeah so that's where you go hire a consultant that actually wades through all the data and then the reason it's archaic is because that data i mean any consultant can argue anything they want with this data set because there's so many busts in the in the actual data set that you can say well if this happened like it looks like it did then it would have been this guy's fault and usually unfortunately and this is where i got

hung up in that claims world was there's bias i mean there is bias by the by the uh consultant who should be objective you can see um them moving more into an advocacy role and really painting a argument picture like a lawyer would that, well, if this, this and that, then that means it's your fault, whereas the other side's doing the same. So to me, that really removes this objectivity that's necessary and makes it much more subjective. So it's just like kicking the can down the road. And until you have an opinion-free system doing the same analysis, which is what Smart PM is doing, you have this open area of arguments amongst professionals who are speaking at a level above everybody else. I can see where it can cause a lot of havoc and you know if one thing delays then you know there's there's kind of a landslide effect you know if bob doesn't put the nails in

and he doesn't show up today the inspector is going to show up tomorrow and be like hey why aren't the nails put in and they're like uh i'm just using something really simple it's exactly right the ripple effect of construction and then and then like, well, I'll be in tomorrow to put the nails in. The inspector's like, well, I got a schedule, man. I'll see you guys in three months. And you're like, well, what the hell? And then they're blaming the inspector for not coming back. Yeah, the inspector's fault.

He can't put the nails in. So I guess with your software, people are able to find those data points much easier because data doesn't, I mean, usually doesn't lie. I don't want to make a hyperbole because there's probably times where data is lying. I've seen chat GPT and it has seen me. But so your data, your, your, your ability with your software and your, and your intelligence is able to go through and figure out, okay, here's where this marker point was, where everything started just kind of going right off the rails. Yeah, it's able to do that. Now, that's not its number one, I would say, value prop. Its value prop is to understand performance in real time while

documenting those things as well. Being able to really capture history as we go along and use that to better understand risk in the future but all the while documenting those things that are deviating from the plan giving the user the tools necessary to react well uh so that even though these things are going to happen they are bob's going to forget to put his nail in and the... Bob always forgets to put his damn name in. But, you know, and then the inspector's going to show up and then he's not going to come back for a week. But the question is, does that mean that we're going to lose a week on the job or is there a way to manage with this reality?

Because things are never going to go right. You know, there's always going to be things that go right. There's always going to be things that don't go right. And then there's going to be the things that you really need to focus on going right to manage to that end date. And that's what we're bringing forth so that that doesn't get lost. So that somebody would know if Bob misses that nail on that day and that inspector shows up, we're going to lose a week. They know that a month before that happens. And you can see the writing on the wall of the areas that you really need to be honed in on, which may not be what the

schedule is telling you, but it may be what the data tells you if you are extrapolating risk correctly. And really, it's starting to guide you into seeing these things while documenting the impacts and then certainly finding opportunities to improve performance down the road to right the ship if necessary. So it's not necessarily looking backwards. It's always looking in real time of what can we do with what we know today. And so basically best case scenario through the hiccups and things that go, I mean, how can we autocorrect or correct,

you know, get back on course or stay on course or improve from where we're at? Yes. And it's a combination of both those things. To me, you need to look reactive and proactive at the same time. Whereas the industry was generally being reactive at the end of a job instead of sort of proactive throughout and reactive and smaller microbursts to keep to that understanding of how do we still accomplish our goal. Usually people are shooting from the hip too early in the job and the schedule is falling apart and nobody's watching, seeing the data, seeing the forest through the trees from the data. And then it ends up sort of spiraling out of control under everybody's noses. And then the arguments ensue. And that's really the problem we're seeking and actually solving here.

Yeah. And those don't, and this just wastes more time on top of everything else. So the, the software, you know, looks ahead and says, Hey,

we need to make sure Bob shows up, does some nails. So someone goes and talks to Marlon Brando and says, make him an offer. He can't refuse to make sure he's shows up on Wednesday. So that So someone goes and talks to Marlon Brando and says, make him an offer. He can't refuse to make sure he shows up on Wednesday. So that, yeah, anyway, I'm just doing jokes.

It's exactly how it works up in New York. There you go. I'll make him an offer. I can't refuse. I don't know what that means. Anyway, Godfather folks, one of the greatest movies of all time.

So you started this. I'm looking at, like I said, some of the different image. Who's your target audience for this? People out there listening, we're going to put some LinkedIn, different things. Who are the people who are your target audience? What industry? Well, obviously commercial, but what particular people? Well, generally most of our customers are GCs or CMs, general contractors or construction managers.

You know, ENR 400 is the top largest 400 contractors in the United States. We sell to a lot of them. They have big, you know, they have a big understanding of scheduling and project controls and the value of data. But we're also selling to smaller GCs that do maybe five to 10 projects, I call them mid-market, maybe not be in the ENR 400, but they still have big projects that are tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars where, you know, every project's at risk of being 10% over budget across the board. You know, those are big dollars that we help them save. So any company that's working on projects over $10 million plus, even in some cases, $1 to $5 million and uses a scheduling process to manage those jobs.

We not only help them understand that process, but we give them a tool to understand the data behind that process. And then we also sell to owners. Owners use our product to really gauge performance of the contractor. They have access to that data set too. Like an owner will receive the schedule files to review the schedule and the progress on the schedule, but they don't, they don't have the time or the know how to actually rip into that data. We actually allow them to do that so that they can have good discussions with

the contractors. As a matter of fact, several projects, the contractors and owners work collaboratively with Smart PM because it actually exposes good information that they can communicate on. And then consultants use our product. You know, the consultants like me that do the forensic delay analysis will use our product. We have consultants who are what's called an owner's rep, where they're representing an owner that doesn't really understand construction as well, or doesn't have the time. I just got money, man. Yeah, they're just looking at it on their behalf. And then there's schedulers who use our product to make better schedules. And then the last

market that we've sold to, and we're just getting going on, is insurance companies. Since now we have a lot of data, a lot of scheduled data. And they like to look at where do some of their customers rank from a benchmarking standpoint and what areas can they improve. And that's been very helpful to building a solid relationship with their customers and working together to de-risk their jobs. There you go. Can Bob order the software too so he makes sure and shows up on Wednesday and puts those nails in? Bob could, but I don't know if he would pay that much for it.

We're not necessarily cheap, cheap enough for a tradesman to buy, but it's generally considered very affordable to a GC. There you go. Well, if Bob will keep putting those nails in on time, he can probably get some money and save up a little bit there. Yeah, Bob might want to work with us here. I mean, if he knows how to tell people how to go, we need those people here.

So how does the data get entered? It's automated project controls and software. Is there somebody who has to be like hey bob did the nails today and they have to input that or how does that work so we're sitting across we're sitting on top of a process that exists so people build schedules they update schedules that that's a process that exists in most commercial projects it's a requirement in most cases so getting access to that specific data set that already exists in most commercial projects. It's a requirement in most cases. So getting access to that specific data set that already exists in the program and in the industry on most projects is all we need to do. In some cases, people can just load it in manually if they want,

depending on how they want to approach it. But we also have an auto generator, an auto, an automatic, you know, loading capability, whether, you know whether you have it in a server somewhere or you're loading it into your project management platform like Procore. However you save these files, if you have a system in place, we can tap in and just grab it. Or you can just manually load it. But yeah, we want to be as non-disruptive as possible as it relates to adding new, you know, steps to the process. So like I said, we're tapping into a process that exists and we have ways to automate it based on you updating your schedule data and saving it somewhere. We'll just get loaded right into our program. And now we've got this new feature that's rolling out where it's going to start automatically sending you your reports

to the various people who need whichever reports that we print. Oh. So do you see more, you know, there's this chat GPT and, you know, discussions about AI. Do you see more of that being able to serve the industry and make a difference in everything you're doing? And just, I don't know, chat GPT is going to figure it figure all out you just put it in and be like hey what's my schedule and it's just like i don't know figures it all out yeah absolutely i mean we are taking an approach

to ai as well unrelated to chat gpt it's one that's really about studying the data behind all the data that we have and and at what projects do well, what projects don't do well, you know, what drives project outcomes. We're going to classify our projects and compare, you know, hundreds, if not thousands of similar projects to help people understand sequencing and durations better and really correct deficiencies in the scheduling schedules that they're building. The other thing that we are thinking or probably going to do is also, you know, we have a lot of good insights into this specific subject matter and we're not limiting it to schedule data. We are going to be looking at

cost data, resource data, pulling it all together into one place. But as we train our customers and as we, you know, study our own information and as we talk about what we're seeing and associate that to the data in our database, we fully anticipate capturing all of that information and putting it into a database that ChatGPT can understand. Do you understand how chat GPT works? It's it really goes out to a data set. Well, right now it goes out to the Internet. And when you ask it a question about something, it's going to go crawl through hundreds or thousands of sites and find this popular opinion and then essentially regurgitate that popular opinion. Now, if you can pull up a subset of information that you

understand intimately, like we do, and you create a database of just that information, we will enable our program to really start to communicate like we do with this information, but do it in an automated fashion. So we're looking obviously analytics using AI to, to help guide people on better decisions, which wouldn't be a chat GPT type thing. It'd be more designed through our understanding of all the data we have and success and failure across these projects that you can see from the data and then giving insights based on that.

But then on the other side, as we leverage this vast knowledge base that we have and that we're getting through all of our phone calls, through all of our meetings with customers, we're going to be capturing that information and then letting our own programs start to understand how we're explaining these things and what we're, you know, what our beliefs are and how that ties to the data. And we're going to allow our customers to interject on that as well so that popular opinion of our own data set and our own teachings can be deployed through the tool. Yeah, there you go. There you go you go well the future is here man i mean i remember the uh days when they're like yeah somewhere someday in the future software will fix everything

now it's ai will fix everything and it's probably getting around and fix us human beings but you know we still have some time it was a good run uh so there you go you know terminal terminator jokes aside anything more we need to know about you and your company and what you guys do? No, I think that covers it all over construction, pull it together properly, and then engage you to understanding what that information means as it relates to your project or your portfolio. And as we continue to build that data, we're going to start to understand projects so that it starts to become much more of a tool to be forecasting with you, for you, not only on outcomes, but decisions that need to be made along the way to be successful.

And our ultimate goal is to optimize this industry, is to produce a world where construction is done on time and on budget and stays out of court. And that's really what our mission is. There you go. Well, staying out of court is always a good thing. I've always learned because once the attorneys start fighting, you start paying them, you know, by the hour and, and they cost at least, you know, a couple bucks. So there you go. How can, so anybody who's interested in your stuff, I think I noticed that you have a consult where people can request

a demo of the service and stuff like that. How can people reach out to you and engage with you to do business? Oh, absolutely. Go to our website, www.smartpmtech.com. If you wanted to learn more about our product, you could always request a demonstration. And if you need to get a hold of me or you have any questions and want to learn more directly you can always just email me um m m pink at smart pm tech.com that's m p i n k at smart pm tech.com and i'll get you in front of the right people there you go there you go well michael it's been wonderful to have you on the show we really appreciate it's been kind of fun and

this is a great journey you know going on an entrepreneurial journey and learning to run your own business and do stuff. And of course, you know, all the crazy stuff that software is going to these days. Yes, it's been quite a journey, you know, back in the days early on, it was a little bit questionable. What am I doing here? But working through that, you look back and you realize this is probably the most educational, informative, and interesting journey I've ever had as it relates to my professional career. So I love it. And yeah, it's not always easy, but at the end of the day, it's the most rewarding and I've enjoyed it. Well, if you can save people money and you can streamline things much faster so that everything

works, make all the different players happy, and all that good stuff. With AI, you might get to the point where you'll have that 2001 Space Odyssey Dave who will just be like, hey, what's the problem, Dave? And he'll be like, Bob didn't show up today. And you'll be like, can you fix it, Dave? And he'll be like, Bob's not going to show up on Tuesday. Yeah. And you'd be like, can you fix it, Dave? And he'll be like. Bob's not going to show up on Tuesday. Yeah.

And, you know, and he'll be like, hey, Dave, can you open the pod bay doors and fix it? And he'll be like, I can't do that, Dave. Anyway, enough automated AI jokes. It's just, you know, I don't know, man. There's some people screaming about, you know, Chad GPT going, no, where's it going to end? Every time I see those Boston Dynamic Robotics, the Terminator music goes playing through my head. The little dogs running around? Yeah, the little dogs running around.

I hear that dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun from Terminator. Yeah, I hear you. I think there's a lot of good that's going to come. Sure. I think the people behind everything and how things are trained is what's most important. And, and being able to leverage these tools, you know, to even do it like Khan Academy's doing to teach people to automate teaching, doing it the right way, instead of just telling somebody an answer, but teaching them. I mean, that's, there's a lot here that can be done,

and just the speed of information and understanding that far surpasses our abilities as humans. So I think a lot of good will come, and I'm not too concerned with the world going to an end from this anytime soon. There you go. There you go. Well, Michael, it's been wonderful to have you on. Thank you very much for coming on the show, and give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs, please. Sure. Thank you so much for having me, Chris.

Again, it's www.smartpmtech.com. There you go. And thanks, Manas, for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfoss, youtube.com, 4chesschrisfoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisfoss. Follow the big 130,000 LinkedIn group over there in the LinkedIn newsletter. Subscribe to that darn thing, eh? And TikTokok we're trying to be cool on tiktok go go help us out there go like a video i'm begging you i'm begging you please do it no i'm just kidding

anyway guys thanks for tuning in be good to each other stay safe and we'll see you guys next time