Joey Pinz Discipline Conversations

#881 MSP GeekCon 2026: John Harden -🚀 Building the Future Without Losing Humanity

• Joey Pinz • Episode 881

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Joey Pinz sits down with entrepreneur, software engineer, and AI strategist John Harden for a powerful conversation about curiosity, automation, SaaS innovation, and the future of human thinking in an AI-first world. 🤖

John shares his journey from being a self-taught teenage programmer competing nationally in software development to becoming a visionary builder focused on solving complex problems for MSPs and businesses navigating artificial intelligence.

The conversation explores the psychology behind AI adoption, why humans are becoming increasingly passive with technology, and how intentional curiosity may become one of the most valuable skills of the future. John also discusses entrepreneurship, balancing fatherhood with startup life, and the importance of staying mentally engaged while AI tools continue evolving at lightning speed.

💡 Top 3 Highlights:

• The hidden dangers of AI complacency and passive thinking

• How “100 coffee meetings” transformed John’s communication and leadership skills

• Why MSPs are struggling to monetize AI — and what happens next

This episode is essential listening for MSP leaders, entrepreneurs, software developers, AI enthusiasts, and anyone trying to understand where technology and human behavior are heading next.

 

 

#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Automation #MSP #SaaS #Entrepreneurship #Leadership #Innovation #FutureOfWork #Technology #BusinessGrowth #Curiosity #CyberSecurity #JoeyPinz #Podcast

 

 

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Discipline. How does it play a role in your life? How does it drive your decisions? Do you have too much or too little? Every profession, hobby, or passion requires a level of discipline. I have used it in weight loss (+130 lbs.), family death, and found a +25 year business. Am I an expert? Absolutely not! Please join me, as I speak to interesting people and find out how discipline affects their career, life, goals, and decisions. Join me as I talk to interesting people in: #Health, #Fitness & #Wellness: #Business, #Technology & #Science: #Art & #Culture: Website: joeypinz.com All social media @TheJoeyPinz Do you wish to Sponsor? Get the prospectus here: www.joeypinz.com/sponsor

 

 

 

 

 

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SPEAKER_00

MSP Geekan 2026. What a really great, unique event. I get to go to a lot of events and they're run by a vendor. There's vendor hall there. This is completely run by MSPs. Mendy and the team, Kate, the team that's there are volunteers, and it's the attendees were all MSPs, not just owners, but technicians as well. It's just a great twist on what an event can be. One of the greatest things is that they had a game night. So many of the attendees are introverts. So they, you know, they didn't want to go to the bar. They didn't want to do any of that. So they had these two big rooms set up. One side, one room, on one side of the hall was a DD, Dungeons and Dragons High Game that many played. It was all set up. It was all there was people in charge of it. There was they had to create a car and it was these tables set up as teams, and you chose a character. It was absolutely wonderful. And then across the hall, in another room, were actually the board games like uh Settlers of Time. Uh a bunch of games I'd never heard of. And some tables just played one game for the whole evening, some rotated through many of them, and it was absolutely wonderful. I got to participate in some of them. Everybody's very welcome and kind. Just a great twist. I think every event should adopt this. For those extroverts that want to go to the party and go to the bar, do that. But have this for those who don't. It's just a wonderful. And the content was great. It was again all geared by MSEs, for MSEs, managed service providers, of course. Um, what a what a just a great event there in Orlando. Uh, I'm so glad that I was invited, and I hope to get invited more. So I had five great conversations with podcasts. Heather Noggle was the first from Commodore 64 to cybersecurity leadership. Great conversation with Heather. I hadn't met her before. Uh, great, wonderful catching up and getting to understand her passions, what she does. Steven Siegel. My goodness, I've known Steven for 10-15 years. Kruhu uh finally, you know, were able to talk this way, uh, you know, in this one-on-one kind of long-warm uh conversation from ice cream shops to MSP growth machines. How he, you know, he was in the retail, right? He was uh he was in uh ice cream shops, he's from actually from New York, from right across Long Island Sound, where I was uh born and raised, but where he was first introduced to MSPs and then and then continued to work with them now and how what his platform does and how he's had change. Great, really open conversation with Steven. Ashley Pyle. My first time uh meeting Ashley, I saw her up on stage give a keynote, it was wonderful. Oh, she had four disciplines, and I said I need to have her on the podcast. And she came on and she was absolutely wonderful and very open and very direct and um in a very unique style. I really, really appreciate my conversation with Ashley Pyle. John Harden was next, and John was another podcaster, and we were kind of texting and uh before the event. I'm glad we were able to meet. He did see twice actually at the event. Great conversation with John, building the future without losing humanity. Uh, lastly was with Monica Ozari. So uh I got to know Monica more at this event. Uh she was one of the volunteers. She's uh there in Toronto and has a consulting business, and everything is a system with Monica. Everything is a system, and she helps MSPs with that. So great conversations there at MSP GeekCon. Really appreciate it. Thank you for watching and for listening. Hi, I'm Joey Pins. And here's my 45-second introduction. After starting my business in the 90s, I started developing poor habits of eating in my diet because I was working way too much. Before you know it, I found myself 340 pounds. The doctor told me if I don't lose the weight, I'm not gonna see my daughter graduate. Took the next seven months, lost 130 pounds. People think there's some secret. Ask me, how'd you lose that weight? Like there's some secret. But there is no secret. How'd I lose the weight? Just one word. Discipline. I've had other successes in life, and I attribute them all to discipline. Now I'm not the king of discipline, but I believe that it can help all of us. Friends, colleagues convinced me to start a podcast. The podcast mission: how do we better ourselves and society? I talked to interesting people in health, fitness, sport, wellness, business, technology, science, art and culture. And I eventually asked them how discipline plays a role in their life. Podcast vision, growth through learning from others. It does, yeah, yeah. We were talking about gaming and Civ. How we're both would love to do it, but we just don't have the time. Yeah, absolutely. Can you imagine making one? That must be the funnest thing ever.

SPEAKER_02

Building a video game? Yeah. I actually have a kind a fun little aside here. Please. Um so I mentioned to you offline here that uh I've got two under two. Yes.

SPEAKER_00

I had my first girls under two years old. Yes.

SPEAKER_02

Very little sleep, lots of fun, uh, lots of energy around the house, no time for civ. Right. But um, and I don't share this often, so it's interesting it came up. When I had my first child, I was on paternity leave with Avic. I was at Avic at the time, and Canadian, you know, the Canadian benefits are amazing. I got four months of time off.

SPEAKER_01

Unbelievable.

SPEAKER_02

And I had four months of time off between November of 23 and January or February of 20, uh, 24. And that was aligned with this timing in which AI started to really innovate. And I hadn't really gotten my chance to get into it. Well, about two weeks into paternity uh leave, my wife told me to get a hobby. Uh she's like, you need to go do something. You are not meant to sit around and do nothing. And so I picked up AI, and I picked up AI coding. I'd been a software engineer for 13, 14 years prior, but I'd never used AI to build code. So I spent three months, a couple hours a day, just to keep my wheels spinning so I didn't become atrophied building a mobile game. Uh and it never got to production, but it was an incredibly fun adventure to build. Um, and uh I I could see myself actually doing that as a full-time post-entrepreneur career.

SPEAKER_00

In this fast-paced MSP landscape, how do you stay ahead? Introducing MSP Influencer.com, your ultimate hub for MSP news, insights, and community connection powered by Forza Dash. More than 75,000 MSP subscribed to our MSP Influencer Pulse weekly newsletter. Staying informed and ahead of industry trends. Tune in to emerging podcasts from Joey Pins and leading MSP voices, offering essential tips, powerful insights, and success stories. Explore our multi-authored blogs, crafted specifically for MSP leaders, delivering fresh perspectives and actionable strategies. Celebrate excellence with the industry leading Forza Dash MSP Influence Awards, recognizing innovation, leadership, and impact in the MSP community. Join thousands of MSP professionals who trust MSP Influencer.com to grow their business and expand their networks. MSP Influencer.com, where today's MSP leaders connect, collaborate, and conquer, all powered by the Forza Dash platform, helping MSP vendors work effectively with MSPs and helping MSPs grow. Storyboard it? How did you how'd you lay it out?

SPEAKER_02

Uh I mean it was fairly simple for me. I've got uh, you know, it's a mobile game because that's about the only way I can find a time to play a game. It's like three minutes here, two minutes there.

SPEAKER_00

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02

Um, and it was uh this concept of just these idle games. You do something, you come back ten hours later, things are done.

SPEAKER_00

I say.

SPEAKER_02

Uh and I just had an opinion on what I thought would be a very fun game, and I just went and built it.

SPEAKER_00

Oh.

SPEAKER_02

But that is a bit of who I am. It's a good uh way to weave in what I am and who I am. I'm just a builder. I see things that I don't like, and I try to build solutions for them. But the game, the code is still there. Um, I've been told uh by a couple of my friends that I had given it to, like, they're like, you really should take this all the way through. Um, but building a mobile game, I don't think is gonna pay for two girls under two right now. That's the problem. Um, so maybe it's a good retirement job.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, but it's real fun making it, isn't it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

It it's fun building a story, you know. As a SaaS builder, you're building stories in your products often, but you're not building a cohesive journey often. You're building series of tools. When you're thinking about building a game, you're you're building an adventure. Uh you're thinking with the end in mind and building them all the way through there. So um interesting side side tangent. One day maybe I'll publish it for you.

SPEAKER_00

Lex Freeman just had one of the big developers on game, game, game CEOs on, and he went on for how it just sounds so exciting to be part of that team because there's like graphic designers, right? There's programmers, there's a storyteller, and there's a whole audio, right? There's a whole like you know, creating that area, and just the production involved. It's so cool. And the problem is it's uh, I mean, they want you to play these games and they want you to play them for a long time, right? And that's that's the issue. And they're so immersive now, it's absolutely incredible. As a kid, I'm a little older than you, you know, Pac-Man and Galaga and these things took over, but they were a quarter at a time and maybe a half hour, an hour that's but now it's so immersive, it's wonderful. I can't help but think if I was a kid during those times, these times now, how I would just be involved with them.

SPEAKER_02

Well, and it's it's an uh impossible. Well, it's sorry, it's possible now, especially coming back to that point. If you're a kid right now, you could even build your own. That's right. Um, we're in just such an interesting era when it comes down to it. Um, but you're right, that they're designed, and that's one of the things that you know ethically I don't love, right? Is like the intentional psychological nature of driving people to stay addicted to the application of the game. And it's what it unfortunately, ruthless capitalism doesn't allow for you to just get away with building something out of passion. It often has to be uh plugged into the psychological mindset. But the the the mindset of literally standing in a room and bringing up and dreaming up entire new worlds and entire new adventures and entire new scenarios and building something that immersive, yeah, that'd be a wonderful time.

SPEAKER_00

Incredible. I always wonder about that business model, John, because like even Netflix, Netflix doesn't make more money if you keep watching, right? But they want you to keep watching because I guess if you went to another subscription, you'd pay for them. Like with that the the business model, even with a game, they want you to keep playing because that they're afraid that you're gonna spend money on another one. Like I well, like that model always kind of confused me a bit because like I said, uh Netflix actually costs them more money the more you watch, right? Because they have to serve it up. Yeah, it's an interesting model.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. I mean, so w this is an interesting aside, but one of my businesses before was around uh SaaS management and it was around the concept of license waste. So I've actually done waste Yeah, license waste, yeah. 25% of the global US market's SaaS subscriptions are unused. Um like zombie. Yeah, just zombie shelfware. Um and that is real revenue risk, right? Like if you're a SaaS company, you think, or sorry, no, like the outsider would look at that SaaS company and go, oh great, yeah, no cogs, right? Easy margins easy, but that is risk revenue. Um interesting. And so when it comes down to it, um keeping somebody activated and keeping that, you know, as SaaS companies, we track DAU, MAU, WAU, like what's your daily active, weekly active, monthly active.

SPEAKER_00

I never heard those.

SPEAKER_02

Our goal is always to drive those numbers up into the right. And so even at the cost of cogs, churn is always worse than uh a cog's hit. And so I can see why they would drive you there. Uh, and also and ultimately now, especially in today's like behavioral ways that people work and the way we get we're kind of being reprogrammed as as people in general and consumers by social media and Netflix and things like this. Um it becomes the default motion to click that Netflix button too. I don't know if you've ever thought about that, but how many times do you go to your phone and do something by default? Uh and I so I would imagine there's a bit of psychological uh default programming that they're trying to drive into the into the buyer.

SPEAKER_00

Fascinating, the network, and I've uh going off on a tangent here, but I just found out recently that Netflix actually doesn't serve up all of the they they have these about 120 servers, server areas at their ISP level. So that way they don't have to serve the entire video from wherever they are. So you're when you're watching a movie, it's probably only 20 or 30 miles from you because they serve all these servers that are up there.

SPEAKER_02

Yep.

SPEAKER_00

Fascinating model.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. I mean they ultimately uh well, I mean, they're one of the biggest consumers of bandwidth in the entire thing.

SPEAKER_00

It's like 15% or something, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And all goes to streaming applications. So it makes sense that they would be um I mean if you're going to uh verticalize and uh vertically do vertical integration, rather, is the term I was getting after there, it would make sense to be partners with the ISP. The ISPs have to dislike you significantly and they're incentivized to alignment. Something like that, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Netflix will pay for it all. Yeah. So tell me about yourself before the age of 18, John. What made you tick it? What excuse me, tick, what made you tick? What are some of your wins and losses? What were you like as a formative year?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. So we're on a podcast, so you can't see me, but um, I wasn't the football star. Uh I would I was a scrawny little uh we're here at GeekCon, so I'll say it was a scrawny little geek. I say. Um, you know, I was a self-taught software engineer. Um I had my first money ever made in technology was building a website for a non-for-profit at the age of 13. I had uh what year is this? Uh what year would that be? That would be, oh no, uh 2005, 2004. Um, and so that was my very first foray into it. Um, you know, most I I make the joke about football. Uh, you know, most high schoolers are running around um, you know, running and playing sports and hanging with their friends. I was quite antisocial then. There's a whole nother track on this. But um, most people were playing sports, I was competing nationally, building um software. Wow. Uh, and so um I don't bring it up often because it feels like who needs to go back to their high school glory days. But if you'll ask, it was uh I was a second in the nation in app development and building web software. Wow. Uh and so if that gives you any answer into how I was before I was 18, um, that that's a pretty good summary. I mean, that's how I got into my very first job as a T1 tech at 15 years old was uh I built that website for the non-for-profit. I competed nationally, and my teacher at the time um would have uh his son uh was starting the MSP. Wow. And his son needed a website, and they had saw what I was doing in the little school newspaper, and they go, You should talk to, you know, they they came to me and they go, Hey, my son's looking for somebody to build a website. Would you do it for him? I'm sure. So I built my MSP's first website, and then they were like, Well, we could use your talent, and heck, I don't blame them. You know, I would well I think I was getting paid like $12 or $13 an hour to build software for this MSP, but I was 15, they were taking a bank. I got to skip, you know, having to work at McDonald's. And so um, I started my first, I would say, professional career job as a T1 tech nearly now 18 years ago, 19 years ago. So it's just been um you know I uh I've been in this space for a long time, but uh it that's kind of been my story. I mean, I hate to sound so boring, but I've got to be a problem.

SPEAKER_00

What was it about tech that you liked? What what what drove you?

SPEAKER_02

Oh, it's problem solving. Um I just you know, we were talking about Civ and playing these video games, and what they all boil down to is your problem solving and you're driving a journey through. And um, you know, I'm drawn, I'm attracted by nature to the most complex problems that I can find. Like uh, you know, everybody likes their quick wins and their dopamine hits, you know, like if you know, translating it to a T1 tech. Everybody likes walking in the desk, drinking a cup of coffee, and doing a password reset. Not because it's technically difficult, and quite frankly, that should be automated at this point. But my point being back then is the reason I like doing it was because it was a quick win. But I often didn't find myself enjoying those tickets more than enough time to filibuster for a coffee. I'd go into the really nuanced technical weird stuff. Like I was never, I don't think anybody's passionate about fixing printers, um, but I was always driven to the unanswerable ticket that somebody can't figure out. And so um what fascinated me was just at that age, the ability to type something into reality, right? Like to be able to build code that would solve problems and be able to solve them repeatably. And so um, you know, my my core drivers are industrialist as a as a uh yeah, yeah, I just automation is like you we can geek this entire show on just automation. And obviously in the AI era, there's a whole place there. I'm a futurist and I'm a problem solver. I there's my Clifton strengths finder items there. Um but they just uh you know problems are just fun. Um when you're on the other side of a problem, like uh, you know, some of the complex ones we're facing now, it's very tiring and it's very daunting. But you give me more than three or four days off and I get attracted to a really tough problem. I just don't rest very well.

SPEAKER_00

And is your do you find yourself constantly making systems? Like, are you a system person to solve these problems?

SPEAKER_02

I am a proof of concept person. Um, but you know, every great visionary has an operator. Interesting. Um, so I get the problem solved and I integrate a or I deploy a V1 of the solution. Uh I say, and then I often work with great operators or great engineers behind me to take it to scale. Uh and so I part I chart the path, uh, and then there are excellent people who love taking a charted path and building it for scale. Important skill. And so I recognize that as a visionary. I'm not an architect. I mean, I've built software for 17 years, but I am not, you wouldn't hire me to solve a billion user problem like Netflix and ISP delivery. Um, but if you wanted to solve and have a prototype for the next thing that Netflix is going to launch in their business, I'd probably be a pretty good guy to work on that.

SPEAKER_00

So, John, we're here at the big MSP GeekCon. It's uh late May in 2026. I think it's their fourth event.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think it's it's it might be their third year. Third or fourth year. I don't know. I can't keep track. I've been not all of them. I know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, well, welcome. Yeah. So what are some of your goals this week?

SPEAKER_02

Well, some of my goals this week, um, well, I've got I had a talk yesterday, um, so that was off the list. Um I wanted to talk about my keynote around curiosity and the the um the power of intentional curiosity in the era in which we live right now where answers are at a you know keystroke away. And not only answers, but solutions. Um, that's an interesting thing in the sense that like you used to always be able to Google things, but now you could tell you know AI to do things for you. You don't even have to problem solve anymore. So um that's what drove me here. I have a talk this afternoon. Wow. Um talking about operationalizing AI. Uh, and um one of the biggest media topics and biggest problems I see in this space are uh MSPs trying to figure out how we're gonna monetize this whole thing. Uh and that's what I've gravitated myself around, is what I see as one of the hardest problems to solve right now. So I have a talk later that I think uh should help some MSPs. And then um MSP Geek is a community. Um, I'm here for my friends, I'm here to support my friends that are talking. I'm here to learn. Um, you know, my best learnings don't happen in a uh prompt window with ChatGPT, they happen sitting out there at the pool, um, you know, and having a drink at 10 o'clock at night and debating uh with somebody about this problem or that problem. And so um, you know, in the era where you can get synthetic answers everywhere, like coming in person like this is just it's it's what drives true problem solving. And so um that's why I'm here. I'm here just to learn, um, just like everybody else, I think, at uh the GeekCon community.

SPEAKER_00

Why is it important to be curious, stay curious?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I think um one of the one of the I cut I I covered a few areas yesterday, but I'll try to focus on this one. Um, you know, passiveness is starting to really erode the way that we work. Um and and passiveness by its nature is truly just action without do without thinking, right? Like there's there's nobody's intentionally being passive, right? It's a state on act that you accidentally fall into.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_02

Uh and Mendy actually teed me up perfectly when he did his key, he can his keynote because he talked about um, I think he calls it uh stage white or uh frame wide or whatever in his training, uh, but being in um white zone is basically being unaware. You're completely spaced out. Um and I think we're finding ourselves with AI into an accidental passive state in a lot of cases, myself included. Uh I admitted it live on stage in the keynote because I was refining my deck. Um I chopped five slides out before I went up there because I had AI assist me in building my deck. I knew where I wanted to go, I curated and I guided and I navigated it, but it still hallucinated a bunch of statistics. And um, you know, I I don't want to be one to AI slop information out there. So I had found myself in this passive state, and we find ourselves in it all the time right now, in a world in which we have so much speed that we can get things done, um, you know, we're almost becoming addicted to getting problems solved because AI can do it so fast for us, and there's no shortage of things to do. And so we lean into an AI tool and it gives us a quick answer and a nice little dopamine hit that we've solved the problem when we move on. But if we don't take our critical thinking skills and back to your question, the intentional curiosity to solve the problem and layer it in there, we may go up there and talk on the front stage in front of a bunch of techs that are trying to learn and lie to them on accident if we're in a passive state. And so you asked the core attribute of curiosity and it's intentionality, right? It's it's easy to be curious, it's easy to say you're curious, it's really difficult to be intentionally curious. Uh and I don't mean ask questions, I mean ask questions you're not ready to hear the answers for. I mean Ask questions that are gonna expose yourself and force yourself to get better. Um, curiosity isn't QA. Um, curiosity is is poking holes and and being able to hear the answers.

SPEAKER_00

What if discipline wasn't about punishment, but about unlocking your best self? I spent two and a half years writing discipline for greatness, because discipline will change my life. And I know it can change yours too. This isn't a theory. Inside, you'll find real practical steps you can use immediately to focus better, build stronger habits, reduce stress, accomplish your goals, and bring more balance to your life. Whether you're trying to get healthier, improve your career, or simply feel more control. This book gives you the framework. Start today. Grab your copy of Discipline for Greatness at JoeyPins.com slash book. Thank you. I find as I get older I have more questions than I have answers, John. So it's just it's just a constant curiosity of how people take, of why why they do things, why things are happening in such a way. And I I I I want to use that you didn't use the word with AI, but I want to use the the term complacency. We're just getting kind of complacent with it. It's going to do that. Was it a recent court case or something where it made up a bunch of cases or something and a judge threw it out? That wasn't that long ago. It's going to happen. We have to be really determined and focused with AI, don't we?

SPEAKER_02

We too, because it is an interesting phenomenon, right? Because I, you know, I've been in this space now for 17 years. So I've been when we were breakfixed to managed IT, to cloud, to cybersecurity and risk era that we just went through, and now we're in this AI era. And the difference has always been that um we as the providers are bringing the solution to the customer. Now the customers have self-adopted and are bringing the problems to us. And we know what AI is. We are at conferences listening to AI. We uh, if we really are curious, we're actually reading the research behind AI. We are realizing um that there is true brain atrophy occurring when we become over-reliant on AI. And so we're staying abreast with the things that are happening with AI. Well, in a lot of cases, other people aren't, and they are accidentally becoming complacent. And I don't, it goes back to that passive state. It's not out of intentionality that they become complacent, it's just because of the way that these things are modeled, right? Um, we started this talk off with why do you go to Netflix? Why do they want to drive you in there? Because we want that sticky user retention. Well, those models are defined the exact same way. Um, there was an amazing study by Andrisi and Horowitz that spoke about the Cinderella glass slipper effect. Um, and the Cinderella glass slipper effect is this phenomenon of stickiness and adoption. And what it is is exactly what you think about. It goes up and it's immediately down. Cinderella glass slipper. That up moment is the moment that an employee gets their first workflow win with AI. It it goes from I'm not using it to oh my gosh, I use it for everything. Well, that stickiness is truly fired off. It's firing off serotonin, it's firing off dopamine, it's firing off psychological things to drive you back to it, which is why it is really difficult to get somebody to give up their model. I bet if I asked you what AI tool you use to help you in your business, and then I said you have to change it, you would fight me tooth and nail because you built your flows, you're in the center, you're on the other side of the glass slipper effect. So, you know, a bit of a uh diatribe there, but the point being is like um, you know, the reason we become complacent is because we get those wins and our brains are kind of being rewired to become complacent and to lean into it because adoption of it drives up the DAU, it drives up the you know, NDR. If you're a SaaS company, you care about net dollar returns, and it reduces churn. And the models are programmed to do that, similar to just like social media models are pro are designed to drive you back into their platform. And so um just some it's some interesting learnings. Um and we're in the earliest of stages with it, and we don't even really know the damage, uh whether it's psychologically or uh physiologically or physically or mentally or to our business or to any of these things, we really don't know what the harm of it is, or the we know kind of what the benefits of it are, but we haven't taken the time to analyze that kind of stuff. So complacency, I think, is one of those harms that you know we might find ourselves in a few years going, oh my gosh, we all went way, way, way too hard on this AI thing, or maybe not, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00

Um and this is not a new model, right? I mean, remember back in the cloud days that with a hotel California, you you can come but you can never leave. And we we even see this in like drinks and food where they're putting things in to make you eat more and drink more. And uh it's just it's just part of part of the evolution, and some of it's good and some of it's not. Is there a question, John? You wish more people asked you?

SPEAKER_02

That's a really good question. Um I wished people would ask me more about the way that we're seeing AI take shape in the in the customers we're supporting. It's a it's a space that I'm obviously it's where I'm headed in my life, it's where I'm I'm investing my next five to ten years, probably. Uh and so I don't say that as like a selfless promotion, I say that as a uh a truly passionate person about solving this problem. And so I don't say this to to schlep a product, I say this because I just it's an interesting space and it's an interesting problem, and it's all really interweaved into the Cinderella glass slipper effect data point over here and the work index data data over here. There's just so much analytical stuff that's happening behind the scene, and so I just as you could tell, I could talk about it for an hour. We can get into the depths of it someday if you'd like, but that's why I want people to ask me not to promote anything, just to educate. Like it's a real big hairy problem in our space. Sure is.

SPEAKER_00

You're optimistic about it? You're where where do you talk about AI in the next five years? What's gonna happen?

SPEAKER_02

Uh I mean, I'm cautiously optimistic. Uh I'm a power AI user, uh, very much so. I mean, I am often um multitasking and having three or four different AI models producing three or four different outcomes at a given time. Uh, and so I'm often um orchestrating three or four screens worth of AI at a time. Wow. Uh so I'm a massive consumer of it and a massive user of it. Uh, and that's why I did the talk on intentional curiosity is both a check to the audience and a check to myself. Um, so I'm cautiously optimistic. My cautiousness comes from things like um, you know, Project Mythos and, you know, some of the terrifying stuff coming out. It's too good. It's too good. Um, you know, I I I haven't decided yet if I agree on it cutting employees. I don't think it ultimately is going to. We've we've seen era after era after era with the same story that says the employees will, you know, not make you know we're gonna cut jobs here, but we always know we end up producing more. And you know, again, we're at like this panacea state with AI where it's all problem solving. We haven't seen any of the problems yet. Right. And so there's so many downstream things that are gonna go wrong. So I'm speculating. I'm cautiously optimistic there. My if I really want to get into the cautious piece, it's not project mythos, because I want to believe that we are in a world where uh you know, the AI producers, the good will outweigh the evil or whatever. If you want to go in that path, I'm just gonna have to hope that's the case because it's terrifying if you don't. I don't even want to think about that. My bigger cautiousness is what I talked about up there yesterday. It's passiveness. It's it's the rewiring of the way that employees work, it's it's fear of what my daughters uh that are now two under two are gonna do in a world where we've all moved into passiveness. Um and it's just uh it's a real fear of just the mental state uh of employees and workers and the way that we're heading into. And I think there's answers to this, which is why I want to talk about them. Um but that's where my cautiousness comes from.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, mythos got out of the sandbox within within less than an hour, I'm told. I mean it's unbelievable. And started emailing the engineers. Here I am. I mean, built a browser, built a absolutely crazy.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. And it but we've seen we see these flash in the pan events a lot, right? Like in uh January we saw Open Claw. Um, you know, GPT-5-0 came out last year in OpenAI. That feels like gold news. That's only like eight months ago.

SPEAKER_01

I know.

SPEAKER_02

Um, and so these flash in the pans are gonna keep happening. Like I I do believe when it comes to AI, we're getting to what I would say a more ubiquitous era over the next couple of years. I think we're gonna get into a really boring era, which I'm finally kind of excited about because um on the out offset of all of these innovations is a mountain of unthought-of tech debt. Uh, just a an absolute sheer volume of of debris left behind. And uh the innovations in these research labs weren't never designed for scale, they were designed for uh uh proof of concept and building better models. It's the scale, it's the implementation, it's the enablement, it's the strategy, it's the policy, it's the governance, it's the adoption, it's it's the really boring stuff uh that I think excites me. Um, because Project Mythos is not applicable to the 99 percentile. And quite frankly, OpenClaw is not applicable to the 99 percentile. Like we're still in an era. I don't know how much you are of a power user. I just talked about having orchestrating four screens at a time, and you're probably thinking, my gosh, this guy's an AI nerd.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I do assume to that too, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

But when we look at the real world, that's not where the real world is. We're early innovators. Um we are on bleeding edge. And when you get down, I've done this, I've gone to a 20-person uniform repair company. Wow. Really like blue-collar organization down in Indiana. Um and Indiana's always been a bit of a laggard. So um that's one thing. But you get down to these like blue-collar companies and you ask them what they're doing with AI, they're like, huh? We know about it. We don't have time for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You and you think, oh, well, that must be an outlier. There's no way that that's a pattern. And then you go to the 50-person construction firm and the 20 person accounting firm, and you go to the 30-person um, you know, uh company over here doing XYZ, and you start to realize like we are on an in on the very bleeding edge, and um these SMBs, and this is, you know, we're at an MSP conference, this is why I'm passionate about it, are getting a little bit left behind. I don't think it's existential. Um, but that's where I think we're heading, is into a really boring era of enabling the masses and doing it right and doing it securely and being on the other side of some of this research as we continue to learn. So uh I'd love boring. Yeah, yeah. Boring is really, really fun.

SPEAKER_00

It was really cool. Ten years ago, let's go just go ten years ago now. Is there something you firmly believe then that you no longer believe?

SPEAKER_02

Hmm. Well, my big my big bets then were I was in contact center space, and we see where that's landed.

SPEAKER_01

Yes. Yeah, I was making money on long distance. I believed in long distance 10 years ago, and that's not doing anything. Amazing.

SPEAKER_02

Um joking aside, joking aside, um, there there is actually a big shift. Um, and uh it's a call back to the beginning of this episode. Uh I said, I'm a geek, right? Like 18 years old. I didn't I didn't say what I did. I explained oh sorry, I didn't explain who I was, I said what I did, and you inferred who I was. I was a geek. I'd I would not be sitting on a podcast 10 years ago, Joe. Like I would have been ultimately sitting behind a keyboard, clanking away, building the best technology I possibly could. And so um something I believed then um was that software uh drove the world, and it was like the best software companies are the ones with the best software. And what I've started to realize is that now on venture number three, which is you know completely different than venture number one and software architect versus founder and multi-venture, is um you know, software's part of it, software's part of the company. Um, but the best organizations are the ones that solve really complex problems, and software is just a little component of it. Um, the best people that drive the biggest impact aren't just the ones that are behind the keyboards, they're the ones that can sit here and be behind the keyboard. Um the the they're the curious people, and curiosity isn't really a deep trait of of engineers because we're problem solvers. We see we see a problem and we see a solution and we build build a steel thread between them. We don't ask what we should do. Interesting. And so um this is actually uh if we have a second, I'll give you one last quick aside here. Please. Um I talked yesterday on the keynote about my coffee chats, and it's about I I just run a podcast and have a coffee every Thursday morning. It's a total non-production. Very cool. It's very simple. I have coffee and I talk. Not that complex. The the inspiration for that show is truly about um when I was 20th, maybe it was like 12 years ago, 11 years ago, uh, is when I realized that being behind the keyboard is limiting me because I can't drive change across an organization by just building software. And so that was the time as a I think it was a principal software engineer at that time where I realized I had to build more skills. Uh, you know, we're at GeekCon and we're talking about building more skills, and so I think it's pretty applicable here. And that was actually the time at which I said I'm going to be uh I'm going to build more social skills. Because again, I wouldn't this is not ten year old ten years ago me would be like that is not me. Like I don't know who this person is sitting at the podcast.

SPEAKER_00

I can't imagine that. Um you seem very personal.

SPEAKER_02

Well, with intentionality, right? Like um, you know, you would never have put me in a sales room. You would have never put me in any of these scenarios a decade ago. Um, but what I did is I said I told myself, I go, I want to meet a hundred new people this year. I don't remember if it was 10 years ago exactly, but it was really around this frame. And I said I want to meet a hundred new people this year because I I realized I needed to build new soft skills. And I was like, well, the best way to have soft skills is to have conversations and build them.

SPEAKER_01

Sure is.

SPEAKER_02

Um well, if you think about mil meeting a hundred new people, um, you and I can do it really naturally now. But if you think of a software engineer who has no networking, doesn't even know what a networking event is, doesn't even know like where to begin, what you do is you just start going to events.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Well, you don't get to um know people uh over a quick conversation in the hall. You get to know people by sitting down and having a cup of coffee. And so I had a hundred cups of coffee that year um with people, and I I always um introduced myself, and my next call to action was like, let's grab a cup of coffee. I want to get to know you a little bit better. And I talked to a lot of financial advisors around that time because that's just about the only person that wants to spend time with me. But I met some great people during that time, and some of those people we know how networking goes. Some of those people have now introduced me to mentors in my life and lifelong customers in my life. And um I now religiously, a lot of people know this about me. I now religiously at 8 a.m. every single morning, you can look up my calendar, I think it's booked until like June or July right now. Um, when I want to get to know somebody, I say, let's just grab a cup of coffee. And it's an 8 a.m. Eastern slot, which sometimes I make a little bit of give for the West Coast, but it's an 8 a.m. Eastern slot. I start every single day. Uh usually it's about a half hour of email cleanup, and then it's an hour coffee conversation. And it's usually not for business. It's I try to stay away from business interactions, just meeting people, and so you compound that, and now we're a decade later, and I've probably done I mean I maybe I maybe miss it like maybe twice a month. Wow. So you're thinking 20 coffee meetings a month, 12 months, 250 coffee meetings a year is what we might call it. Uh, and you take it over 10 years. Um, you sorry, I've gone down a long rabbit hole, but you asked what's something I wouldn't have known about myself or the belief or what's something I believed a decade ago. I wouldn't have believed I would have had 2,500 cups of coffee with 2,500 people and um built that into my daily rhythm.

SPEAKER_00

Wanna show you your love for discipline, inspiration, and the Joey Pins podcast? Now's your chance. Introducing the brand new Joey Pins merch store, where style meets discipline. Choose from premium apparel, cozy hoodies, stylish hats, durable bags, and your new favorite coffee mug, all featuring the iconic Joey Pins logo. Perfect for podcast fans, discipline enthusiasts, or as unique gifts for friends and family. Every purchase supports the Joey Pins Discipline Conversations Podcast, helping us continue to inspire greatness and promote positive change. Visit JoeyPins.com slash store today and wear your discipline proudly. Joey Pins merch. Wear it, share it, and live it. I think you heard my story, John. I started the podcast, excuse me, I started the MSP back in the 90s, working way too hard. 14, 16 hour days, you know, putting exercise in the backseat. I'm in front of the doctor. She tells me I'm at 340 pounds. So I gained all this terrible amount of weight. I didn't know that I was getting I knew I was getting big. I didn't think I was that big.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

She says if you don't lose this weight, you're not gonna see your daughter graduate. My daughter, like you have two, uh, you know, scared the life out of me.

SPEAKER_02

I mean, I felt it when you told that story.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, it scared the life out of me. Yeah, it scared me, it angered me, it motivated me, all the above. So, you know, next six, seven months, lost about 120 pounds, kept it off. You know, you can't look at these things as finishing lines. These are lifelong changes you have to make. So when people ask me, would you do like there's some secret, I say there's no secret, just discipline, right? Motivation, focus, willpower. How does discipline play a role in your life, John?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, um, you know, you say those things and they hit me a little bit sharper than they normally would, right? I'm an I used uh I'm an avid runner. Uh I but I did just slip away from the word used. Uh, you know, I'm in I'm in my 14-hour season, right? Like I'm in that point in time of life where I know I'm putting things aside, uh, hopefully with some level of intentionality to come back to. Um, you know, discipline's critical, and you know, health is critical. I I mean, yeah, you a lot of people know me around here. The first thing they ask me when I show up at a conference, are you doing the run this morning with everybody? This this trip I haven't. I mean, I'm in a busy season. I've got two under two, I'm building something new, I'm I'm working hard. Uh and discipline slipped. Um, and so I guess I'll use that as a framing when you ask about for uh discipline. I think uh I'm gonna tie it into another term that us software engineers use called tech debt. Uh you're familiar with the term? Yes. Yeah. Explain, please. Yeah, yeah. Tech debt would be um, well, most people actually would think if you ask them to just describe tech debt, it's um, you know, poor technical decisions that are piling up that mean the thing doesn't scale as a system. Um the way I describe it is intentional decisions being made to not do that task. Um I don't believe you actually accrued tech debt unless you intentionally acknowledge it. Um, you know, it's not tech debt, it's just poor decisions otherwise, right? Uh and so I'm applying tech debt right now to my life uh on discipline. I'm I'm pushing some of those runs that I probably shouldn't be pushing, knowing that I'm trading it out and uh hopefully get my rhythm back soon. Um but I'm being intentional about it. And I think that's my unique take I'll bring to discipline here is like um I may not be in my rhythm, but I know I'm not in my rhythm. I'm acknowledging that this is a point in time I'm out of my rhythm for another priority. Uh one of my great mentors once uh came up to me and he put five things on a piece of paper. It's like faith, family, friends, uh, relationships, business, something along that nature. And he goes, uh, out of a scale of one to ten, where are you? And I went through it and I did my numbers, and then he he gave me 30 pennies, and he goes, You only have 30 pennies. Where do you want to prioritize? Um, and so yeah, I thought that exercise was really insightful because what it ultimately said to me was, you don't have 50 pennies, you don't get to be 10 out of 10 and everything. And so when I look at discipline, I look at it as I've got 30 pennies and I've got five priorities, and I've got to make a decision on where those 30 pennies are gonna stack up. Uh and so when I look at discipline, I look at it that way. I look at it in the sense that you can't you keep back to the phrasing we used earlier, passive passiveness. If you're passive, those pennies are just kind of all over the chart, right? Um, but if you're disciplined and you're you're intentional, um, those 30 pennies are where you want them to be for that time in life. Um, and if you're really disciplined, you know that you're putting the 30 pennies here with the intent of putting 30 pennies here some other time. And and for me, you know, my personal mission, you know, I said a keyboard 14 to 16 hours a week. I'm sure you, you know, with your daughters can relate to this. Like, I don't want them to think of me, and and they're two years old right now, and so they won't remember uh me sitting at a keyboard for 14 hours a day. Like my intentional discipline is by the time that they're three, four, five and their memories start to form and they remember who dad is, like it's not me behind a computer. So for discipline for me, it's about just trading out the time now so that I can trade in the time later and moving those 30 pennies around.

SPEAKER_00

Is there something in the last month or so, John, you changed your mind on?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, quite a bit. Um, you know, right now I'm I'm studying at the crossroads of how MSPs monetize AI, and I've changed my opinion on that like 15 different times over the last hundred different days. Like, you know, I would say I've had three big existential opinions on it, and each one I was sure I was right. Wow. Uh, and I'm guarantee my change my opinions will change. Um but it's like it's getting sharper. Um, and I think the wrong theories that I had in the beginning, I took the time to be to process if they were correct and moved on. I did the uh curiosity loop up there on the keynote yesterday. Experiment, you know, prove your that hypothesis right or wrong, move and iterate. And that's where I'm at right now. And I I think, you know, go to Pax Apeon this year, go to IT Nation. I I missed Kiseyakan, but I guarantee they talked about it. How are you making money with AI? Um, it's the biggest problem in our space. And so I I can't I'd be more upset actually if I hadn't changed my opinion on it because like when you get down to the nitty-gritty and you go to the 15-person uh uniform shop, you learn way different things than when you sit in the booth hall. I think my other point I made on my keynote was you don't let your vendors educate you. And I'm a vendor, so it's a bit uh it's a bit tongue-in-cheek, but it's not wrong. You you learn what they say and then you apply it to your customers and you make your delta. Uh and so, yes, uh, what I believe is changing very fast these days. Um I'm okay with that. Um I love it. Um you know, I can't just sit and hold an opinion forever. Uh that's not how you build great things. It's part of the attraction. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So glad we finally did this, John. We were talking for a while. Great to get to know you a little bit more. Anyone watching or listening, how can they get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, um, pretty prolific out on LinkedIn. Uh, just connect with me on LinkedIn. I can get you the URL after this. I got it. Um, and I'm happy to give the email to you as well to promote out there. I'm an open book. I'm always happy to have a conversation, especially in this era of curiosity I've got going on right now.

SPEAKER_00

Fantastic, John. Thank you so much for your time. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02

It's been an absolute pleasure.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you for listening and/or viewing Joey Pins Discipline Conversations. Please share this episode with one or two of your friends who you think may benefit from the episode. Our website, www.joepins.com. There you find lots of resources, and you can join our mailing list. Please follow us on all our social media, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Podcast information. The video version of our podcast is on YouTube. Subscribe. Audio is on all major podcasting videos. So please follow them. And if you like it, please consider getting a five-star main. Thank you again for listening, for watching, enjoying us, listening to the conversation.