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Hosted by Jared Correia, Legal Late Night is a weekly, pop culture-infused romp through the latest & greatest business management ideas and technology tips for lawyers, featuring engaging guests, and constructed in the format of an old school television variety show.
Jared Correia (00:00):
Hello everybody. We've got a show that promises to be at least mildly interesting for your listening and watching enjoyment. As always, I'm your host, Jared Correia. I'm the CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting. For the monologue, we're discussing the state of artificial intelligence and legal tech. In the interview, we're joined by Thomas Kranz, the director of sales at ProfitSolv. In the counter program is Thomas's time loops in which we explore the outcomes of famous movie Time Loops. But right now it's time to talk about what the fuck is happening as legal tech and frontier AI solutions begin to jostle each other in a shared Venn diagram of pain.
(00:44):
In April, Anthropic hosted a live webinar entitled Claude for Legal Teams. More than 20,000 attorneys attended. That's a hell of a lot. Just a button of the glossary. Anthropic is the AI company whose chatbot coding product is Claude. You've probably heard of it. Then in May, Anthropic released a series of Claude plugins or skills and connectors or integrations to lawyers and for legal products. Skills are basically prebuilt capabilities that define how an agent operates. Skills can be developed for specific industries like the legal vertical. Think of these as the bones of automated workflows. Connectors are essentially integrations that can directly connect LLMs and AI agents with third party platforms without the use of any kind of bridging technology. So that's a big deal. In this case, a connector is a pathway by which skills can be loaded into software that attorneys use. With me? So if you want to use Anthropic's tools for legal work, you're now able to do so directly inside of Claude and/or via skills accessible through the Anthropic connector for legal tech software where that direct connection exists.
(02:11):
But Anthropic isn't the only frontier AI vendor that is making inroads into the legal space. So-called frontier AI tools are the most advanced general purpose artificial intelligence models available at any given time. It's a little bit of a squishy definition, I know, but right now those models would include OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra and Claude Opus 5.5 among others. That's not an exhaustive list. Speaking of OpenAI, remember them? The company that was all the rage when ChatGPT came out in 2023, which seems like eons ago at this moment. They're the company that offers the chatbot coding product. ChatGPT is still around and they recently released a new version of the latest model Astra for the legal industry called, wait for it, Astra4Legal, very creative. Just like with Anthropic, a number of legal integrations are being made available as well. Astra4Legal was relatively recently announced and it's accessible only by select law firms right now.
(03:18):
Read the biggest ones, but it'll trickle down from there. Certainly this is not the end of these sorts of incursions. I suspect Microsoft, which has made noise about trying to tackle the legal industry for forever, maybe this is the time, Google, XAI, and Meta, among others, may take a crack at law practice too. This of course leaves lawyers with an interesting choice. Do they opt in to one of these legal specific AI models and to what else do they give it access? Assuming that is that you need anything beyond these tools. You can make an argument that you don't. And then how do they vet these products which have deeper access to law firm systems potentially than anything previously deployed? Governance is now the biggest deal it's ever been. No one wants their face hugged. But even as attorneys begin to familiarize themselves with terms like zero day retention, they're not the only one with things to mull over.
(04:22):
With Frontier AI vendors releasing legal specific products that would allow lawyers to entirely avoid case management software in favor of these new tools instead of connecting the new ones to the old ones, that's effectively an existential crisis for legal tech vendors. Uh-oh. Which begs the question, especially for the law practice management software companies that have traditionally served as the hub for legal operations, do they continue to gate keep their systems from frontier AI tools or risk losing clients who want to use those tools aggressively in those new models? In other words, is the only way forward to let the Trojan horse in when you know the invaders are inside and just cross your fingers in the hopes that you can coexist with them and that they won't destroy you? I don't know what the answer will be. I don't think anyone does, but I have read the Iliad and if that can provide any guidance, things are looking dicey.
(05:18):
Currently, legal tech vendors are answering this existential question in different ways. Some like Clio with its Clio work platform are offering their own white labeled AI chat and coding tool which can exist inside its system or be connected to others. Clio's conference is happening next month in Boston. We'll see if any of that changes. Some like Harvey are straight up building their own LLMs in an attempt to cut out the frontier tools altogether. Others like 80M announced at their Kaleidoscope user conference last week, the release of their own MCP. MCP stands for Model Context Protocol Connector for Claude, another integration effectively, to effectively invite the frontier AI models into their platform while also continuing to offer their own AI tools inside their case management system, my case via a feature set called IQ. Still others with integration capability are effectively allowing for third party access by frontier AI tools via third party bridging softwares like Zapier.
(06:29):
And unless a legal tech concern is completely walled off its environment integrations of any kind, probably an unwise decision in its own right, there's just no way to avoid cracking the gates for the barbarians just a little bit. In reality, this may just be a Morton's fork. AI is here to stay no matter what choice legal tech vendors make or what choice lawyers make for that matter. And we all just have to live with the consequences however they shake out. Next up, we've got Thomas Kranz of ProfitSolv. Hopefully you choose to stay and listen to him. We'll get his impression on the AI question in legal tech, but we'll also address the topic that attorneys hate the most. IOLTA accounting. Well, maybe the second most. Sales. Well, I've effectively run out of things to say, which is awkward because this is a podcast, so I'm just going to try to learn how to whistle.
(07:32):
Hang in there. I'm sure I can get this. Actually, it's not going well. Perhaps we'll try that another time. Let's bring on our guest instead. It's his first appearance ever on the Legal Late Night Podcast. It's Thomas Kranz, everybody, who's the director of sales at ProfitSolv. Welcome to the show, Thomas. How are you?
Thomas Kranz (07:54):
Doing well. Thank you, Jared, for having me. I'm excited.
Jared Correia (07:57):
You're a very patient man because the audience won't know this because this will look like a seamless episode, but I was trying to adjust my camera for like 20 minutes before we started. Good times.
Thomas Kranz (08:09):
We got to have a good video, so I understand.
Jared Correia (08:13):
Okay. I don't want to put a lot of pressure on you, but I've heard this may be your first podcast. Is that correct?
Thomas Kranz (08:18):
It is, yes.
Jared Correia (08:20):
Just rest in the notion that you are more professional than me. Maybe not Evan, but decidedly more professional than me. Let's start. So this is your first question ever on your first podcast ever. This is very exciting. Let's celebrate. I talked a little bit about AI in the legal space, in the monologue, and I feel like that's all I ever do anymore. So as someone who works inside of a legal tech company, how do you view frontier AI tools? Are they competitors? Are they sidecars to what you're doing? What does that look like for you guys?
Thomas Kranz (09:02):
I think in this day and age, if you're not embracing AI, you're going to be left behind. So it's trying to figure out what the best way to use AI to benefit your clients as well as benefit the work that we're doing on the backend for our clients. So I use it as a resource every single day.
Jared Correia (09:23):
That's cool. So if a lawyer comes to you and is like, "What about Claude? What should I do with that? What should I do with that in conjunction with ProfitSolv products?" What do you tell them?
Thomas Kranz (09:36):
I think the one thing to be mindful of with AI is the security behind it and making sure you have the correct security set up using any open AI tools that are public, any information or questions you're asking on there, that's training that AI model. So having a secure AI portal is probably your top priority, especially for a lawyer and attorney, especially if you're asking confidential questions like that.
Jared Correia (10:08):
Yeah, you got ethics rules that you need to adhere to for sure. So I know you're in the sales side of things, but I'm sure you're getting questions about artificial intelligence from attorneys. So what do they ask you? Does that come up a lot and do they have specific questions that they come back to over and over again that you're seeing?
Thomas Kranz (10:29):
Yeah. A lot of the questions are just, what are you doing with AI? What is your motion? Right back to that security question, is your AI tools secure? Is my information being secured and being tested on? Stuff like that. That seems to be the biggest, scariest portion for a lot of lawyers is just where is my information going when you're using AI? So we're able to fill them in on the backstory of how Cosmox uses AI and how we're growing in it as well.
Jared Correia (11:03):
Yeah. So as a salesperson, you'll answer that question for them. You don't have to pass them along to somebody else.
Thomas Kranz (11:09):
Yeah, usually so. Unless it gets really technical, then we bring in the big guns with the product team. Okay.
Jared Correia (11:14):
Okay. So what's your basic answer then? If somebody was asking, okay, how do you secure the data in an AI space? What do you tell people?
Thomas Kranz (11:25):
Yeah. Cosmyx is SOC two compliant, so a lot of that is making sure everything's encrypted both at rest and in transit. So because Cosmox does handle a lot of the accounting side for attorneys, that security is our top priority. So anything we're rolling out is staying secure on our servers and making sure that nothing is at risk for the attorney.
Jared Correia (11:51):
Okay. Let's move away from security for a second. AI features. I feel like everybody's excited about this. What kind of AI features do you have now in Cosmolex and how do you talk about those to attorneys? Just give me the pitch.
Thomas Kranz (12:11):
This is really exciting for me. A little backstory on me, I've been here for seven years, so I've seen the product grow a lot, but seeing the new AI functionality that we have rolling out is really cool. This year specifically, we've received a lot. So we have AI intake, which is one thing. A lot of attorneys that I'm speaking with, they spend a lot of time trying to sift through an info@xyzlawyer.com
(12:41):
Email address when people are reaching out on their website or if they're running Google ads or anything like that. And then they have to sit through all of those leads, try to get back to them, and everybody knows the faster your responses, the higher your conversion rate's going to be. So bridging that gap is a big portion. I believe we're the first to market with an AI intake functionality. So that streamlines that process for them that when someone fills it out on their website, it can automatically do their conflict checks, send out documents for signature, schedule meetings, accept consultation payments, stuff like that.
Jared Correia (13:20):
And that's right inside of the software platform. No secondary tools.
Thomas Kranz (13:26):
Yeah, that's something that's really cool is a lot of the tools out there, it's like an add-on product for a CRM system or intake. Ours is fully embedded in the software, so there's no double data entry. So once that lead is in the system, it's in that system throughout the entirety of their life cycle.
Jared Correia (13:47):
That's cool. Any other AI features you want to highlight? Just tell me stuff that's been announced already. I don't want you to get in trouble.
Thomas Kranz (13:54):
I won't get in trouble. I talked to the product team before this, so I can talk
Jared Correia (13:59):
About what
Thomas Kranz (13:59):
We currently have as well as the roadmap. We have AI document summarization, which is really cool. So when you upload a document to Cosmex, you can quickly just summarize that document instead of having to read through 10 different pages to figure out what is the motion on this. You can actually just get a summarization. That's pretty customizable too. So what do you want it to look at that document and pull out? So that's another feature that we just rolled out recently.
Jared Correia (14:29):
Nice. All right. Talk to me a little bit about ProfitSolv because you work with Cosmolex, I know, which is effectively one of their case management softwares, but ProfitSolv has a ton of different products. Do you want to talk a little bit about what the family of products looks like?
Thomas Kranz (14:47):
Yeah. The goal of ProfitSolv is kind of your one-stop shop. So any lawyer or law firm can reach out to ProfitSolv directly. And because we own, I think it's now 12 different business units all in the legal field, we can kind of piecemeal whatever someone is needing. We can find the right solution, which is one of the reasons why I love it so much is I don't have to... If I get a prospect in, I don't have to force them to purchase or convince them to purchase one product. I can actually just have a conversation with them about what they're looking for and then based on their needs, pair them with the right solution that we offer.
Jared Correia (15:30):
So sort of like a la carte legal tech, which is nice. Yeah. 12 products. So I know Cosmolex is one. Are there other major programs within the family that people should be aware of?
Thomas Kranz (15:44):
Yeah. If you are an enterprise level firm in the US, like a very large firm, we have Tabs3 and Orion, which are more geared towards those very large law firms with over a hundred users. They have a lot more customization to those different portions. And then we have very simple time and billing software like TimeSolve, which Cosmex also now has a lower tier. They can fit a lot of the similar needs that TimeSolve offers. And then we have systems like being able to build out websites for law firms. A large majority of the people reaching out to Cosmlex are brand new law firms. So we are able to build out their website. We do marketing so we can build out their Google ads for them, e-signatures, stuff like that.
Jared Correia (16:40):
Thanks for that rundown. I appreciate it. And folks can, I'll push out the ProfitSolv website when we're done here so people can check that out. But spoiler alert, it's ProfitSolv.com. Let's talk about you for a second, sir. You're a little bit of a mystery, man. I checked out your LinkedIn. Not a whole lot of information. I didn't want to hire a private investigator. I though that would've been weird. So how did you come to work at ProfitSolv?
Thomas Kranz (17:10):
It's a very interesting journey. I started at a company that was... I mean, I was really young. I was like 21 and I got my first kind of SDR role and I was just booking meetings. And then from there, Cosmyx was one of the companies that hired that call center. And then from there was able to get placed on the Cosmlyx team and then they bought out my contract and brought me in internally back then. And I've been with the company ever since, so just kind of grown with them over the years and now I'm director of sales.
Jared Correia (17:49):
I know. Kudos to you.That's a big deal. Went from basically hired on contractor to director of sales. You don't see that every day.
Thomas Kranz (17:58):
No, it's a very cool journey. So I've loved the company. I love the people I work with.
Jared Correia (18:04):
So you were in sales before this. Have you always done sales or were there other jobs before sales jobs?
Thomas Kranz (18:15):
Before I was working with Cosmex, I worked for a marketing company, so we were building out websites for just any company. It wasn't in the legal field, but that was pretty much where I got my start.
Jared Correia (18:31):
What do you like about sales because you clearly like it? You like it enough to stay employed in it.
Thomas Kranz (18:39):
I think the nice thing about sales is you get to have conversations with a lot of different people and you get to understand where people are coming from. And I think there's a lot of different types of salespeople out there. There's the car salesman people that nobody likes to deal with. And then there's the consultants. I don't like considering myself in sales. I like to consider myself a consultant for law firms. And I think that plays into the fact that we are ProfitSolv as one, and I'm not shoehorned into a small business unit where I have to force one motion. It's really about understanding the client's needs and then being able to find a way to solve them or point them in another direction if you can.
Jared Correia (19:26):
Yeah, it's interesting because I think a lot of lawyers in particular, they don't like to think of themselves as salespeople either. So you put together this sort of set of mental gymnastics to be like, "This is why I'm not selling. I'm doing something else kind of." Is that fair to say?
Thomas Kranz (19:44):
Yeah, absolutely. Which plays into the intake portion and doing the marketing for lawyers and attorneys. They don't like to do that. That's not why they became an attorney. They want to help their clients. The acquiring of clients is a very difficult portion, especially when you have full workload, you don't have time to sort through a bunch of the emails that are coming through. You want to be focused on people who you can actually help.
Jared Correia (20:12):
Yeah. So attorneys, they have a tough, especially small firm attorneys. You talked about new lawyers coming to you guys and asking about the tools. You got to be like chief cook and bottle washer when you start a law firm. So what would you say to attorneys who are reticent to try and close business and sell? Do you have any advice to them? Is it more of a mindset shift to have them thinking like, "I don't have to think of myself as a used car salesman," because I think a lot of them do.
Thomas Kranz (20:44):
I think part of it is understanding what is your demographic, what is the type of client that you want to bring on? Obviously most attorneys, when they're opening a law firm, they have an idea of what practice area they're going to be focused on, which is good, but then also what are your rates and what are the incomes that can afford your rates? Everybody knows the most valuable thing to attorney is their time. So do you want to be spending a lot of time on consultation calls, talking to people who they don't fit your practice area and they possibly can't afford your business, or maybe people who are looking for a whole team of lawyers?
Jared Correia (21:27):
Yeah. So part of the reason you have software, especially that can automate things is so that you can push that off your plate as a lawyer and you provide solutions for that, which makes a ton of sense. All right, but you also manage people because you're not just a salesperson, you're the director of sales. So what have you learned as you've climbed the ladder here and now manage other people?
Thomas Kranz (21:51):
A lot of it is the industry lingo. If an attorney is going to block off an hour of their time to speak with me and my team, that is a very valuable hour that they're taking away from their day to spend with us. I want to make sure that we're doing plenty of research beforehand, looking them up online, doing the research on their website, trying to figure out who are we meeting with, and then trying to gather as much information to understand what they might be interested in looking at, but then really just having a conversation. I think that's the biggest thing that I push with my team is before anybody is an attorney, they're a human and they want to have a genuine
Jared Correia (22:33):
Conversation. So I've been told.
Thomas Kranz (22:35):
Yeah. They want to have a conversation. They want to feel heard and they don't want a salesperson that's just going to say yes, yes, yes, yes to everything. We can't do everything under the sun. So I think it's important that if someone is asking for something that we don't handle, that we're honest with them. And the ethical walls that we have on the sales team is one of my top priorities.
Jared Correia (23:03):
I mean, I think that's probably refreshing to hear for a lot of people because I think salespeople get this rep that they'll promise anything to get a deal done, but you're consciously guarding against that, sounds like.
Thomas Kranz (23:16):
Yep, absolutely. That's one of the reasons why we record most of our calls is so that we can look back and make sure that everybody is following those guidelines. And we never want to over promise, under deliver. One of the things that we really enjoy and we're very proud of is our retention rate at Cosmolex. We have a very high retention rate. It's like at 97, 98% right now.
Jared Correia (23:41):
That's awesome.
Thomas Kranz (23:42):
I mean, no one makes any money, us or the attorney, by purchasing a software and canceling two months later. So we want to make sure this is going to be a long-term fit for someone, otherwise every party in the situation loses.
Jared Correia (24:00):
Now you talk to a lot of attorneys obviously, and you talk to a lot of attorneys who manage their own firms. Do you think anything that you guys do in terms of the sales team is applicable to managing a law firm? And do you talk to attorneys about that?
Thomas Kranz (24:14):
Yeah, absolutely. One thing with the intake is understanding your prospects and being very quick to getting back to them.
Jared Correia (24:26):
I
Thomas Kranz (24:27):
Mean, it's like 79% of clients sign with the first attorney they speak with. We did a whole poll and research on that portion. And if you're in court and someone is reaching out to you, or maybe it's the weekend they're spending time with family, I know most attorneys are still working on weekends.
Jared Correia (24:46):
Yeah, they're not spending time with their families. Come on.
Thomas Kranz (24:50):
But if you're not available to get back to that person right away, most clients, they're going online, they're searching real estate attorney, and they might be filling out 10 different intake forms in the same sitting. So if you could be one of the first people to get back to them and say, "Hey, thank you for reaching out to us. Let's schedule a consultation. Love to meet with you," whatever that kind of first message typically looks like, we try to automate that. And then also having the disqualifiers in the intake form to where if you're getting a bunch of people on your website and we're getting that traction, but people are reaching out to you, they're selecting different practice areas than you focus on or they don't fall into the ideal client that you work with, then it can automatically target that and then put it into a different drip campaign to where it will send them an email saying, "Thank you for reaching out, but you don't align with what the motions of our law firm focus on." And then they don't have to spend any time doing that.
(25:51):
So they can really just spend the most of their time focused on clients who could actually sign and they could actually help.
Jared Correia (26:00):
Yeah. So it sounds like some of the intake strategies you deploy are very relevant to law firms. All right. So let me ask you this. I think this is a related topic. How important are metrics to what you do?
Thomas Kranz (26:17):
I think it's most of the job is making sure that - It's a lot. Yeah. I mean, everybody wants to grow. Us as a company, as well as the attorneys, they want to grow their law firm. They would be successful, especially brand new attorneys. I mean, that's a very scary portion of a business is you have so many different things that you need, different hoops that you need to jump through to get a law firm off the ground. And sometimes it can be really expensive getting started, so it can be very overwhelming.
Jared Correia (26:53):
So you are leaning on some of these data points internally. Do you ever talk to attorneys about what data points they should be looking at? Are some of them the same as what you guys analyze, do you think?
Thomas Kranz (27:06):
Yeah, like profit and loss, how much time are you spending on a flat fee case is a big one that a lot of people don't really think about on a regular basis, but they're like, "Oh yeah, I'm going to charge $600 for a will or
Jared Correia (27:20):
Something
Thomas Kranz (27:21):
Like
Jared Correia (27:21):
That." You do flat fees so you don't have to track your time, right?
Thomas Kranz (27:25):
No, that's the thought process is, oh, I don't have to jump through all, I don't have to count every six minute interval. But with flat fee cases, it's always good to... We push a lot of track your time on the side, your non-billable time, because as you get busier and busier, you're going to want to look back at those flat fee cases and say, "I just spent 10 hours on something that I did not get paid 10 hours worth of time." So then you can look back at those metrics and see maybe I should readjust that flat fee rate that I'm charging, whether that's up or down.
Jared Correia (28:04):
So if somebody's listening to this and they either do not have a case management software or are looking for one for the first time, like a new attorney, for example, what should they be looking for in terms of a collection of features or in terms of product specifics?
Thomas Kranz (28:24):
I think if you're looking at Cosmex or you're considering a platform, it's how many places are you doing the same work? How much double data entry are you doing? And that is a big motion on the market. I mean, we see it all across the board with different competitors is it's a kind of piecemeal system where it's a bunch of add-ons. Same with the intake portion that we were talking about earlier is add-on for this, add on for that, add on for this, or you're integrating a lot of different softwares. Everybody knows integrations just are not the most reliable. Any of those systems update, they could break the integration. So how much of the same work do you want to be doing twice? So that would be my first question is, are you looking for a consolidated software? That's what Cosmex's big motion. It's always been our biggest motion is it
Jared Correia (29:20):
Combines - Rather than multiple point systems.
Thomas Kranz (29:23):
Yeah. And QuickBooks, and then how do you prioritize your compliance side of the system? And if you're using QuickBooks as a solo attorney who's just getting started and you have no QuickBooks experience, then it can be a little bit difficult because it's not made for a law firm. Obviously, QuickBooks is probably the biggest accounting platform on the market, but it doesn't have all the reports and the different things for trust accounting, stuff like that.
Jared Correia (29:55):
Right. You're not doing IOLTA accounting out of the box on QuickBooks.
Thomas Kranz (29:58):
Exactly. And if you're not used to accounting. QuickBooks can do so much that it can be very overwhelming when you join it. Whereas we scale it down and it's just focused on what an actual attorney needs to do in a law firm and in the accounting space, which makes it very simple for someone who's just getting started who has no background in accounting to really learn.
Jared Correia (30:23):
Thomas, I have one more question for you. You are in Raleigh-Durham, so I would like you to choose now, Duke or North Carolina.
Thomas Kranz (30:34):
Oh, that's a hard one. Probably Duke.
Jared Correia (30:37):
Is it? Yeah. All right, good. That's the correct answer. Will you stick around for one more segment? We got some fun stuff for you coming up next. All right, we'll be right back everybody. Welcome back everybody. It's the Counter Program. Once again, it's a podcast within a podcast. This is a conversational space where we can address usually unrelated topics that I want to explore at a greater depth with my guests. Expect no rhyme and very little reason. Thomas, welcome back.
Thomas Kranz (31:10):
Thank you.
Jared Correia (31:12):
This is the fun part. At least for me.
Thomas Kranz (31:14):
Let's get started.
Jared Correia (31:16):
I've got an entirely new game that I've created just for you. I'm even naming it after you, and we're going to play it today. It's called Thomas's Time Loops, and it goes like this. I'm going to read you a scenario from a movie that involves time travel. You just need to tell me how the protagonist escapes, but don't worry, you'll have multiple choices available to you if you need them. Should be pretty straightforward to follow here. Are you a movie person, Thomas?
Thomas Kranz (31:52):
Here and there.
Jared Correia (31:54):
Okay.
Thomas Kranz (31:55):
I watch
Jared Correia (31:56):
Some movies. This could get ugly, but I'll fill in the slot. What's the last movie you watched?
Thomas Kranz (32:02):
I think the last movie I watched was... What was the last movie I watched? This is a really good question and I was not prepared for it.
Jared Correia (32:17):
That is what we do, sir.
Thomas Kranz (32:19):
I think I watched Grownups just a few days ago.
Jared Correia (32:22):
Grownups, Adam Sandler?
Thomas Kranz (32:24):
Yeah.
Jared Correia (32:27):
Adam
Thomas Kranz (32:27):
Sandler movie.
Jared Correia (32:30):
See, this is where the age difference I think is going to come in because I don't like the new Adam Sandler movies. I only like the old Adam Sandler movies because I'm ancient. Like Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, that's my speed. I hate the grownups movies. Okay.
Thomas Kranz (32:48):
We can leave that one off.
Jared Correia (32:50):
Okay. Grownups is not something we're going to talk about further.
Thomas Kranz (32:55):
All right.
Jared Correia (32:56):
All right. Let's see how we do. Let's see how we do. Question number one. The movie is Back to the Future part three. Seen it?
Thomas Kranz (33:06):
I have not.
Jared Correia (33:07):
Okay. I'm going to lay it out for you. Here's the scenario. The good news is that you don't even have to see these movies to make guesses, and I'll just fill you in as we go. Stranded in the wild west of 1885 with a broken fuel line, a time traveling teen calling himself Clint Eastwood and his best friend an eccentric scientist must return to their future in 1985. But how do they do it? Are you familiar with the Back to the Future franchise?
Thomas Kranz (33:39):
Not super familiar with it. I've definitely heard about it, but I don't think I've watched
Jared Correia (33:43):
It. Do you know who Marty McFly is? Oh my God, Thomas. Thomas, what we're going to do is we're going to put a list together for you of movies that you can watch after this, starting with the Back to the Future trilogy, one through three. All right. Okay. You can still guess. They're in the Wild West, right? How do they get back to 1985? What sounds like the most logical option? Number one, they ride horses into a wormhole that they discover in an old mansion on the edge of town, mansion wormhole, option number one. Number two, when lightning strikes the clock tower in the middle of the town, they use it to generate the necessary 1.21 gigawatts of power to travel back in time in their time machine. Number two, lightning strike. Number three, they hijack a steam locomotive to push a time traveling DeLorean across an unfinished railroad bridge to hit 88 miles per hour, the necessary speed to travel backward and forward in time.
(34:47):
Thomas, what do you think? The first one... Lightning strike, locomotive.
Thomas Kranz (34:53):
The first one, I'm not sure about riding horses into a building, so I'm going to roll that one. I think maybe the time clock, the lightning at the time clock.
Jared Correia (35:09):
Good guess. It's actually number three. They hijack a train and they push their time travel vehicle off a cliff, but by the time they enter 1985, the bridge is finished and they don't fall down the cliff to their deaths. Sounds like that bit better. But you were right on. Yeah, it did work. Happened. Just so you know, Back to the Future part one involves a lightning strike on a clock tower. We got three movies to watch. No, that was pretty good. Just use your logic. Question number two, have you seen the movie Groundhog Day? I watched this with my daughter the other day for the first time for her.
Thomas Kranz (35:54):
I don't believe so.
Jared Correia (35:56):
Great. Here's the scenario. These are actual things that came out in popular media back in the day. Trapped in a vicious temporal loop where the same day, Groundhog Day repeats endlessly, a cynical weatherman played by Bill Murray wakes up each day to the same alarm clock playing Sunny and Cheers, I Got You Babe on the radio. But how does he break the cycle? So you got the scenario. He's a weatherman. He wakes up every single day as Groundhog Day. Number one, he builds an experimental accelerator inside the local television studio to shatter the time loop. Experimental accelerator number one. Number two, he falls asleep and wakes up the next morning after finally mastering selflessness, kindness and love. How beautiful. Kindness wins the day. Number three, he defeats a giant marshmallow man and after crawling through the residual goo arrives on February 3rd. Experimental accelerator, love and kindness or a marshmallow man.
(37:06):
How does Bill Murray's character break free from the time loop and groundhog day?
Thomas Kranz (37:11):
Based solely on the fact that you just watched this with your child, I'm thinking it's family friendly, so there's probably warm backstory to it. So I'm going to go with number two.
Jared Correia (37:22):
Beautiful, Thomas. You're correct, sir. You're mastering the counter program. Does the Marshmallow Man ring any bells for you?
Thomas Kranz (37:30):
It does not.
Jared Correia (37:32):
Ghostbusters. That's another movie. All right. We're up to five films you need to watch.
Thomas Kranz (37:39):
I have my homework.
Jared Correia (37:41):
I know. I am feeling so fucking old right now. All right. Let's move ahead in time a little bit. This may be a movie you've seen. Question three. Looper. Have you seen Looper?
Thomas Kranz (37:52):
I have not.
Jared Correia (37:54):
We're all for three. Now I'm interested to know, will there be a movie that you've seen on my list? I think there will be. Bear with me. It might be the last one. All right. Let me read you the plot of Looper. A corporate drone played by both Joseph Gordon Levitt and Bruce Willis, that's a clue, is recruited into a ruthless underground agency that uses temporal loops to eliminate future criminals until he encounters his own older self marked for a forced retirement. Okay. How does he get out of the time loop? Number one, he kills his older self and takes his place as a supreme leader of the syndicate, so he kills his older self. Two, he sacrifices his own life by shooting himself as a younger person to prevent his older self from murdering an innocent child. Number three, he steals the agency's primary time machine and escapes to the year 2050 to live a peaceful life.
(39:03):
So does he kill his older self, kill his younger self or escape via time machine? I did not watch this movie with my daughter, if that gives you any inclination of the answers.
Thomas Kranz (39:15):
Yeah, because the two ones are a little brutal. Yes,
Jared Correia (39:18):
Yes. Do not watch Looper with a child.
Thomas Kranz (39:26):
Let's go with number one. He kills his future self.
Jared Correia (39:31):
Excellent guess, but it's actually number two. He kills himself when he's younger, so his future self never arrives. All right. I got three more for you. You a Tom Cruise fan?
Thomas Kranz (39:46):
Yeah, a little bit.
Jared Correia (39:48):
Okay. Okay. I got two more for you. We're starting with a Tom Cruise movie. It might be a little back catalog, Tom Cruise. Edge of Tomorrow. Seen it?
Thomas Kranz (39:59):
I feel like I've seen that a long time ago, but I don't remember the story plot.
Jared Correia (40:06):
Partial credit. Let me read you the story plot. An elite team of soldiers experiences a brutal beach landing against alien invaders over and over again, resetting their day every time the protagonist, played by Tom Cruise, dies on the battlefield. So this is like Groundhog Day, just a little bit more violent. How does Tom Cruise escape the time loop? One, he pilots a nuclear submarine into the alien hive mind to detonate a hidden stash of explosives. Two, he triggers a massive belt of explosives inside the alien's central brain, absorbing its blood as he dies and resetting time to before the invasion. That is very involved. Number three, they build a mechanical exo suit powered by alien technology to blast their way off the beach. So how does Tom Cruise escape an Edge of Tomorrow? He pilots a nuclear submarine, he triggers a belt of explosives inside the brain of the alien, or they build a mechanical exo suit to escape.
(41:14):
Thoughts, guesses?
Thomas Kranz (41:16):
He would need a submarine for the second one. Interesting.
Jared Correia (41:22):
I'm going
Thomas Kranz (41:22):
To go with number one.
Jared Correia (41:26):
Number two. Number two is the answer.
Thomas Kranz (41:29):
I'm not doing too well at
Jared Correia (41:30):
This. Well, in your defense, you've never seen any of these movies. This is why maybe we should prepare these sections, but I'm dead set against it. All right. I feel like you have to have seen this movie. If you have not seen this movie, I am going to fall off my chair. Avengers Endgame?
Thomas Kranz (41:51):
I have seen that, yes.
Jared Correia (41:52):
Hell yeah. We did it, Thomas. We did it. Question five. Would you like to relay the plot of Avengers Endgame and how time travel is involved? I turn the floor over to you.
Thomas Kranz (42:08):
I have seen it. I am not super, super familiar with remembering what the plot was, but I do know that there is the rings that brought the people back.
Jared Correia (42:19):
Or the stones.
Thomas Kranz (42:21):
Yes. The stones that win it. Yes.
Jared Correia (42:25):
Clearly I need to update - Evan's going to share his Blu-ray collection with you after we're done here. He's kind of a movie snob. Okay. Earth's surviving heroes, for those listening, use quantum technology, of course, to navigate past timelines, executing a desperate time heist to gather all six infinity stones and refers a genocidal cosmic snap. You remember when he snaps his fingers and stuff like... Okay. All right. So do you remember how the movie ends, how do they get out of it or do you want your multiple choice? I want my multiple
Thomas Kranz (43:01):
Choice.
Jared Correia (43:02):
Number one, they build a massive particle accelerator in space to permanently freeze the entire universe into a single time zone, thus isolating big bad Thanos so they can kill him. Number two, Iron Man, Tony Stark sacrifices his own life by snapping his fingers while wearing a gauntlet with the recovered stones attached in order to erase an invading alien army. Three, they use me. Thor uses his magical hammer to shatter the time stream, permanently trapping Thanos and his army in a separate dimension. Number one, the particle accelerator. Number two, Iron Man saves the day. Number three, Thor saves the day. And Marvel's so crazy. I think any of those things could theoretically be possible for this movie. This is your chant. Number two, correct.
Thomas Kranz (44:02):
I knew
Jared Correia (44:02):
That. Very impressive. It was a joy to have you here. I will be following up later today with several movie recommendations via email. I'll hook you up, but thanks for coming on today. You're a great sport. I appreciate it.
Thomas Kranz (44:19):
Thank you, Jared. It's been a pleasure.
Jared Correia (44:22):
Thanks to our guest, Thomas Kranz, who is the director of sales at ProfitSolv. To learn more about Thomas and his work, visit ProfitSolv.com. That's ProfitSolv, all one word, solve without the E.com. P-R-O-F-I-T-S-O-L-V, ProfitSolv.com. Check him out. Now, because I'll always be a '90s kid who sold his NES to upgrade to the Super Nintendo, but his true passion is burning CDs for anyone who would listen. I'm not just doing the modern version of that, which is creating Spotify playlists for every podcast episode that I record where the songs are tangentially related to an episode topic. For this week's playlist, I put together a series of tracks with respect to our guests' specialty. It's songs about selling. Yes, there are songs about selling, and it's brought to you by the 1963 Jeep Wagoneer. Whoops, we might be stuck in a time loop. Oh, no. Jeep has not sponsored us in the present or the past, though the future is ours to grasp.
(45:27):
Join us next time when I run away screaming.