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The podcast for aspiring entrepreneurs who have families. If you're a dad looking to escape the rat and quit your 9 to 5 while keeping food on the table for the family in the process then this show is for you. We discuss the challenges, tips, tricks and hacks to help you make the leap into freedom.
Brendan Ryan:
Join me today.
Joshua Plicque:
Oh, good to be here.
Brendan Ryan:
Good, good, I'm glad you're here, man. I've been wanting to have you on for a little while now. So your story involves, we went to the same college and you came out of college and worked as an engineer for a couple of years, I believe, before you decided to do your own thing and do the entrepreneur thing. So can you tell us a little bit about that and what motivated you to do that?
Joshua Plicque:
Sure, yeah, so I grew up and my dad's a mechanical engineer at the local electric authority in Jacksonville or he was, he's retired now. It's called Jacksonville Electric Authority. And throughout, my dad's a baby boomer and I kind of saw him get screwed over kind of like by the corporations. There was like a whole three year window where he was underpaid compared to people at his same position. And he had to. unionized with other workers and have to go and fight for a raise and he got back pay for it. And it was just like watching that growing up. Of course, I graduated high school in 2008 into the great recession of the United States and of the world economies. So a lot of millennials in general are pretty much not very. The word is trusting of the corporate outcome of, you
Brendan Ryan:
Mm-hmm.
Joshua Plicque:
know, pension and all that stuff. So shout out to my dad. My dad did get a really nice pension as a result of that, but that came at a lot of sacrifice and a lot of hardship. So I studied mechanical engineering at the University of Florida and I was three years into a five-year degree and I knew I didn't want to do it. I was like, this is, this sucks. And I know that what I'm heading for is a life that has a glass ceiling to it because I saw my dad. I was. I was following in my dad's footsteps. I knew I didn't want to do it, but I knew that if I had the engineering mindset, I could use it for whatever I wanted to do thereafter. So I'm sitting there in college, it's year three, I know that I'm not going to finish this or I know I'm going to finish this degree because I didn't want to be in college a single second longer than I needed to be because I really, I personally really hated college because and the reason why is because it's not real. And that's actually probably what attracted me to entrepreneurship. I'm naturally very lazy. And the only thing that actually gets me going is getting involved in a risky type venture. So when I go to school and like, I have these assignments and like really they only exist for this quarter or like up until I get my first job. Like I know that what I'm doing is not real. And like we're working on theoretical stuff, like not actually designing cars and designing planes, which is what. a mechanical engineer does in the real world, we're talking about the equations of motion for a car going down an incline in the rain on a fake mountain. It's cool in a way, but it's not real. And so I did not do very well in school. I hated school and I was ready to get out of there as soon as possible. So I had that, right? School is not real in my mind. And then I also have, hey, I'm going to something where I'm going to have a ceiling. Like someone's gonna be able to always dictate how much money I'm gonna make. Someone's always gonna be able to dictate how far I'm able to go into my profession. And so that's what attracted me to entrepreneurship very early. I was in college, I read this book by a guy named Alan Wong. He's a Chinese immigrant. And he was one of the first millionaires in the Apple app store. He made a police scanner app, it's called Five-O Radio. And he wrote a book about it, it's called... Gosh, I don't remember. Yeah, the name of his company is Rego Apps. I don't remember the name of his book at this point, but his name is Alan Wong. And he wrote a book about like how he was working as an engineer almost full-time, actually employed an entrepreneur. It's actually a really good book for this audience because he, like a lot of the entrepreneurial journeys, it's like, hey, I quit my job and I became an entrepreneur. He actually did it in a very safe route. He actually had his full-time job and on nights and weekends he would work on the Five-0 police scanner. And then he made enough money where it was enough money for him to be able to leave his job very safely. So I read that book and I was like, dude, I want to make apps. I want to be a software person. And so that led into me telling people that in my personal life, which led to a random email that I got from a marketing company in Jacksonville saying, hey, I had a childhood friend who was working there as a software developer. And he actually studied advertising. That's a whole other thing. But The owner of this marketing company said, hey, like your friend has recommended you, why don't you, I know you want to make apps, but we also make websites. How about you, when you graduate, you come make websites and apps for us. And so that's how my career started. It's just, you know, I guess like in terms of like law of attraction, like it was just, it was what I was consumed with. I was reading books. I knew I didn't want to be a mechanical engineer. I was telling people about it. And so like the opportunity, it's like the Eastern philosophy, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Like
Brendan Ryan:
Mm-hmm.
Joshua Plicque:
that's kind of what was what was going on. That's what happened. And what has continued to happen in my life is when I like focus on something, like the door is just naturally open because you're kind of just focused on that thing. And so it's sort of like when you buy a new car, right? And you see, like say you buy a Ford Explorer, you now see Ford Explorers on the road. It's that you're living in the exact same reality, the same box that you were living in before, but your perspective has shifted to notice all the Ford Explorers on the road. So I don't, you know, I'm not, you know, I'm not, too well-versed on the law of attraction, but just on the outside looking in, it just makes a lot of sense to me that when you actually focus on something, it naturally comes to you. So that's essentially how my career started, where I was a mechanical engineer for about a year into my career, and I became a software developer very early.
Brendan Ryan:
Okay, yeah, yeah, man. It's wild that you mentioned, you know, the law of attraction or the idea that what you focus on expands that sounds very woo woo to some people, right? Some skeptical people. And honestly, like, it's sounded woo woo to me in the past as well. However, there's actually some scientific basis for all that. And it's it's wild
Joshua Plicque:
Really?
Brendan Ryan:
that you mentioned that because I just published a short form video about this yesterday. And what I mean by that is, Anybody that's familiar with physics would be familiar with the double slit experiment or the observer effect. I'm not sure if you are Josh, but basically what it means is when we observe particles, whether they're light or matter, when we observe them, they change their behavior. And if you actually look at particles under a microscope, they will slowly aggregate and grow together. So what you're focusing on. grows, it expands literally. So you see that like at a literally a micro level under a microscope for particles. But if you think about it on more of a macro scale in terms of people's lives, in terms of how to pursue excellence, right, take somebody like a Warren Buffett who has been focused on making money since he was 14 or 15 years old, and now he's a multi billionaire, one of the richest people alive, 85 billion, I think it is, or a guy like Tiger Woods. you know, to talk about it, totally different field. He's focused on golf since he was literally like four or five years old, becomes one of the greatest golfers of all time. So what you focus on expands. The problem is most people focus on things for too short of a timeframe, right? They
Joshua Plicque:
Okay.
Brendan Ryan:
never get to that level of mastery. So, and to that point, I think they get discouraged or they get bored, right? And so in entrepreneurship, I think that that's probably one of the biggest hurdles. at least for beginner entrepreneurs is that either they get bored of the thing, which might be a good thing. It might mean it's not for them anyway, whatever they were focused on, or they might encounter some difficulty and quote unquote fail, right? And then get discouraged and just go back to their nine to five or whatever. So tell us about when you launched your business. So you told us how you got involved and got out of college, why you hated college. And what you based on what I know about you, you are a very risk tolerant person. So when you mentioned that college wasn't real, what you were getting at is that the laboratory in which you learn had no stakes, right?
Joshua Plicque:
Right.
Brendan Ryan:
It was a big
Joshua Plicque:
Right.
Brendan Ryan:
in terms of like, there's no stakes. If I fail, like, you know, there's no big deal, right? And so there's like no negative reinforcement there. So tell us about what motivated you to go entrepreneur and what that was like in the beginning, how you launched your company and everything.
Joshua Plicque:
For sure. Yeah. So Alan Wong inspired me to do software. So the two books that really were instrumental in my transition, eventually almost 10 years later to become an entrepreneur, was Alan Wong's Rego Apps book. And then there was MJ DeMarco's The Millionaire Fastlane. So The Millionaire Fastlane is, I see you shaking your head yes.
Brendan Ryan:
Yeah, it's
Joshua Plicque:
That
Brendan Ryan:
a game.
Joshua Plicque:
book has a ridiculous title. But that book I've read maybe five or six times, it is the, I would say that is the gospel of what we're trying to do here in the employee to entrepreneur route. Because it talks about all the different ways to mess it up. And anyway, there's a section in that book where it talks about all the different like business systems that you can have. And it talks about software and building a website and how like it, so there's a section in the book where there's five things that qualify as a fast lane business. So the reason why it's called, he defines what a fast lane business is, What you can do is you can make the mistake that I eventually would make even having read that book Which is launching a business that doesn't have a good what's called wealth equation So here's the business so fast forward to the future the business that I did end up starting which was I'm doing software consulting I'm helping businesses be able to Reduce time intensive processes and increase automation through their own software platforms So the problem with that business is it's a linear wealth equation in the sense that to make more money I have to get more clients. To get more clients, I have to invest more in marketing. To be able to fulfill those clients, I need to hire more people. And so it's inherently just a linear equation where the only way I get rich is to be able to hire a bunch of people and to manage this giant monster. And the example they use in the book is a carpet cleaning business. So the key takeaway from the Millionaire Fastlane book is these five things that qualify as a fast lane business. and the acronym is NECST, which is next. N means it's the commandment of need. You must solve a need that like people, like when you have an iPhone, right? When the smartphones came out, you have the internet at your fingertips. Like that's the problem it solved. It wasn't obvious at the time, but now it's like something that people literally can't live without. E, E stands for, and I'm doing this off the top of my head by the way, because I've read this book so many times. And like it literally changed my reality. So I ended up starting a slow lane business, but E is barrier to entry, meaning that there needs to be, it needs to be difficult to be able to get into your field. For example, like with you, Brendan, as a pharmacist, it takes, you have to effectively become a PhD in pharmacy to become that. Software development, it's a high barrier to entry because not, it's not because like there's education that you need, but because it's very hard to morph your mind to it. So that's E. C is the commandment of control. in the sense that if you start a Google affiliates business, if you have an affiliate marketing business or like you're running, your business is dependent on another one, you don't have control. And so like, here's a good example of that. It's like all the SEO people, a lot of SEO companies, SEO short for search engine optimization. A lot of those companies went out of business when the like the Panda update came out many years ago, the Penguin update came out many years ago because the tactics that they used Unless you were able to innovate and actually figure out what the new Google algorithm was doing a lot of companies went out of business Because they were unable to deliver results for their clients and the reason why is because they violated the commandment of control They had a whole business that was dependent on an entirely other company Which was Google s stands for the commandment of scale your business meet needs to be able to scale Quickly with like that was the problem with the slow lane business that I started the only way I would make more money is with More clients with more employees and so it violates the commandment of scale because I can't scale quickly. Like it's the same problem with starting a coffee shop on a street corner. You're not gonna become a millionaire. Well, there are Chick-fil-A franchises that make millions of dollars per year. You probably could become a millionaire starting a coffee shop. You're never gonna become a billionaire starting one coffee shop because you need to have thousands of coffee shops to become a millionaire. And T stands for the commandment of time, meaning that the way you make money needs to be decoupled from you actually working on it. So all that to say next, Um, man, I forgot how I got into this. Moon or Fastlane. Where were we at, Brendan?
Brendan Ryan:
You're describing how that changed your life and how you were in a service business essentially where you couldn't scale because it.
Joshua Plicque:
Exactly. Yeah. So, oh yeah. So how did I end up becoming an entrepreneur? I knew that I was destined to be it because I have a high appetite for risk and I have an attraction to uncapped potential. And that's the problem with being an employee. The problem with being an employee is that you are like, it's always someone else dictating your worth. The beauty of entrepreneurship is that the market can dictate your, the market dictates your worth. At the end of the day, we all serve somebody. Like at the bottom line is that everybody answers to somebody, whether it be the President of the United States, whether it be the janitor at the business complex, we all answer to somebody. But the beauty of entrepreneurship is that you have control over people's answer. Because when they say, hey, I don't want this, you can shift, you can pivot that idea and you can make it and turn it into something that the market is going to pay a lot of money for. And that's the beauty of entrepreneurship. And what's attractive about it is because... There is unlimited potential. It's a problem space that can scale into trillions of dollars. At the time of this recording, this is May 10th, 2023, like we have trillion dollar companies like Apple, Microsoft. These companies are worth a trillion dollars plus. So my transition into starting a company was, I read that book, software satisfied four out of those five. It automatically satisfies the commandment of time. You can make money without being at your computer. it automatically satisfies the command of scale because scale, you can scale to billions online. It has a high barrier to entry and the command of control. If you control your own website, this is still tied into the end, the idea that you choose. By choosing to build a website or a web platform, you just knock out a lot of the fast lane business ideas or business commandments in that book. So, I essentially, Was training to become a software engineer to be able to build my own software platform for almost 10 years And so it got to a point where I was working at a startup and I kind of like straddled it, right? I was the first employee at the startup. I have about 4% equity in this legal practice management software This was attractive to me. I worked there for about four years. It sort of satisfied my entrepreneurial tendencies, but it didn't completely Like it was The reason why is because I stayed at that job for so long because I had a lot of control. The guy that was running the company was the managing partner of his law firm. And so I was almost the effective CEO of this tech startup. And that's not just hubris. Like the ladies that worked at the law firm, they had this picture of lions in the office. And there was this lion that was standing above all the other lions and they put my name on it. They were kinda just showing me love and stuff, I guess. As a young man, I was effectively running a company of like seven. seven or eight people because my boss needed to run his law firm, which was funding our startup, the legal practice management startup. So the reason why I didn't jump ship earlier in my career is because I had my taste of it. I was able to manage, I was able to hire people, fire people. We were, I had, I had that uncapped upside with my 4% equity. Of course, you know, it's, it's a pittance as opposed to owning the company, but it's still satisfied. The fact that when I work hard and I, and I worked till 10 PM at night. Like unless you have overtime, even with overtime, right? If you have like one and a half pay, there's still a capped upside to the extra effort that you're putting in. The beauty of entrepreneurship is that every second that you put in of extra time, you extract 100% of that value. Like it's not because like when you're an employee, the only way the employee-employer relationship works is if there is an inherent disconnect to the value that you're providing to the company that the value can provide to the end consumer. The only reason why people are hired is because of two reasons. Because one, we all have the same limited 24 hours in a day. And so that's the reason why people have to get hired is because one person can't do it all. Two, when someone is hired, the business actually has to make money off of that person being hired. And so that means that there's an inherent disconnect to when someone is hired, you're going to be getting a small piece of the pie compared to how much money the company is going to be making. And so that's the value. The beauty of entrepreneurship is that you start off at the top. Like, and it's built into the tax code. Like when you're an employee, you pay taxes first. When I get my paycheck, they've already taken out the money. When I own a business, I can spend all the capital and literally pay $0 in taxes. When you're an employee, the money gets taken out first. When you're a corporation, the money gets taken out last. And so it's built into the tax code, the value, like you get rewarded for the risk that you get taken on, that you take on as an entrepreneur. And if you continue to invest in your business and you actually don't have any profits in your business, this is the reason why Amazon was able to grow to a billion dollar company. They kept reinvesting, starting up Amazon web services. They were paying little to almost nothing in taxes for years and decades at a time. And this is how these big corporations have been able to grow into these. mega conglomerates is because at the end of the day, they pay taxes on what they keep. But if they don't keep anything and they keep investing in themselves, they get to grow and just reach critical mass without ever having to pay money. Imagine like having a job where you don't have to pay taxes, where you literally you dictate how much money you keep and you can decide that, hey, I'm not going to keep anything until 10 years later. And so 10 years later, you're a trillion dollar company. Wow. Like what an outcome. So I guess to answer the question, Brendan, of why I started my business, it's because of all the things that I'm talking about here. The math is just bad for being an employee. The upside to it is that there's a sense of security to it. And I think that that's not even real though. I don't know how, I mean, people are getting laid. I work in the tech industry and people are getting laid off. I think that the only security is betting on yourself. And I think that's... investing in your own education, investing in your own knowledge, because a job can come and go. But when you have your own skillset that you bring to the marketplace, it doesn't like when I show up to the marketplace, I'm unconcerned about a job because I know I'm in I'm infinitely employable because of the skills that I bring to the marketplace, whether it be being a manager or being an entrepreneur or being someone that can code. So all that to say, if somebody's listening to this and you're like standing on the fence on the outside looking in like. you know, am I good enough? Is it gonna be too risky? I mean, at the end of the day, none of us are getting out of this alive, one. And when I arrive on my deathbed, I don't plan on, the thing that I think that really haunts people is the things that they didn't do. And so I've started this business, right? I started this slow lane business where it's a linear wealth equation. And I've, so this is kind of transitioning to our next topic, I guess, Brendan, which is, I decided to like downsize and shut my company down. The reason why is because I know that I'm doing, I'm literally, the company I have is in the millionaire fast lane book. This is a company that cannot scale to millions and billions of dollars very easily. And so here I am servicing all these clients, I'm hiring all these people and it just, I know that I was going about it the wrong way. I'm not, I don't have a math equation that's exponential out of the box. I have a math equation. Like you can't beat math. Math is unbeatable. Just like death and taxes, there are certain things in life that are undefeated. And math is one of those things. You can't beat math. So yeah, I started the company. So I've been running it for about three and a half years now. So in the grand scheme of things, the world as I'm perceived by the world, I am a success. I have a company that's made over the course of the past three years. about $800,000, which is pretty cool. Like within three years, almost close to a million dollars. And we've serviced clients. Thousands of people were affected by the software that we made. I've had four, five, six employees in that time, but I've decided to shut it down. And the reason why is because it did not actually feed. I had effectively created a job for myself. Literally, like the only way I make money is for to make sure that we're billing our time and I have to track people's time sheets and make sure that the clients are paying. Like it's just, it's a drag. And like, I've created a job for myself and that's not what I want. I want to have an exponential outcome. So I'm at a point in my life as we're recording this where I'm actually going to be pivoting into actually starting a fast lane type business. All
Brendan Ryan:
Nice
Joshua Plicque:
right, I'm
Brendan Ryan:
man.
Joshua Plicque:
done.
Brendan Ryan:
That was beautiful. There was so much value there. I wasn't expecting you to put on the entrepreneurial clinic for us, but thank you for laying that all out. So for you, it sounds like it was very logical for you that somewhere along the way, very early on in your employee career, you realize that the numbers don't really make sense to continue doing this, right? And you realize that I call it for my own journey, it was my financial red pill moment. I read... Robert Kiyosaki's, Rich Dad Poor Dad, kind of late. And that was like the book that made the spark for me to realize that this is not the way, right? Like this is not the way to really be free. And you mentioned something that I think actually is a misconception. The idea that having a job, being an employee is more of a safe route than entrepreneurship. And I think the way that you phrased it, you might agree. But I think people confuse comfort with safety. I think it's very comfortable
Joshua Plicque:
Okay. Yeah.
Brendan Ryan:
to have a job and to know what to expect in terms of your income bi-weekly or whatever it is and not have to put up a lot of your own capital and risk it. In other words, risk for a lot of people is very uncomfortable. Maybe not so much for you, you seem like a risk tolerant guy, but for a lot of people, they're more risk averse. And so I think they confuse. comfort with safety. It's not actually safe. Your employer can 100% fire you whenever they want. They're the ones with the power, right? It's not safe at all. Investing in yourself, betting on yourself, like you were describing, having that skill set, that highly employable skill set in your case, coding, right? Software is something that nobody can ever take away from you. So I believe that that's a misconception, like a common... conventional wisdom that needs to go away, like bad information, essentially. I think that, you know, 50, a hundred years ago, that if you were to go. Work in a factory as a laborer and you got a pension, you were part of a union. There was a lot of things that used to exist that that sweetened that deal, if you will, but you mentioned in the beginning of this podcast that your dad got a pension, um, most jobs don't have pensions anymore, most, or give you a 401k. which was something, by the way, anybody listening to this, look up the invention of the 401k, how that came about. The idea was that they wanted to shift the responsibility for retirement from the employer to the employee, right? So it's not as safe as it used to be. It used to be
Joshua Plicque:
Yeah.
Brendan Ryan:
your pension, they basically paid you into retirement. So anyway, yeah, let's talk about... the evolution, if you will, right? So to me, from my own experience, entrepreneurship has really been a lot about self-improvement, but especially self-discovery. So you might go out, as I mentioned earlier, and try things and realize that you're bored by this, you don't really enjoy it, or like you kind of got discouraged and you go and pivot to something else. But knowing what I know about you, it seems like you're kind of experiencing something similar. So what are your thoughts about that? Have you... As time has gone on and you've taken the actions that you have built the companies that you have and where you're at today with everything that you're doing, do you think that that has shed a lot of light on like what your purpose is in the world? In other words.
Joshua Plicque:
I would say that that was one of the most unexpected benefits of entrepreneurship and the one that I would give the most credit to is that it has forced me to grow to be a better man. Here's a good example of that. There was an employee that I had back at the startup, the legal startup that I worked at that was just not getting a lot done compared to the other employees on the team. So It was a software team and this guy was, at this time I was becoming a manager for the first time in my career, this guy was replacing me as a backend engineer on the team. At the time we had two backend engineers, we had four frontend engineers. Long story short, in the software world we work in what are called sprints, where they're usually between one to four weeks of like, hey, here's the body of work we're going to be achieving by the end of this one to four week window. And whenever we would show up to the sprint deadlines, everybody would have their work done, but this guy would only show up with like 30 or 40% done. And essentially I ended up needing to let him go. And the reason why is because he wasn't performing and I had needed to keep the integrity of the team in the sense that everybody else is keeping up. Why aren't you keeping up? And like, it was something that I really wanted to avoid because... We were starting to get health insurance at the time. He was showing me pictures of his kids. And like, so there's a few things that were wrong here. One, I wanted to avoid the conflict of having to fire somebody. And I liked this guy, by the way. I liked him and I didn't want to have to fire him. But I was also obligated to protect the integrity of the team and how everybody else was showing up. It was an all remote environment. So I couldn't, you know, I had very little vision onto what people were doing throughout the day. I can only judge people by their output in a remote environment. So that's one. Two, I ended up letting him go, but as you can probably tell, I didn't let him know explicitly my frustrations and my lack of acceptance of his performance at the time. And so when I ended up firing him, one of the biggest regrets in my life, so I don't regret firing him, one of the biggest regrets in my life was how I went about firing this man. Because I, you know, our company's in Florida, so it's a right to work. work state, meaning that we can fire without reason. So there was no person, and it's a startup, like there's less, there's not a lot of like infrastructure. So he never was put on a personal improvement plan. I was never clear to him about, like I wasn't abundantly clear to him that he was riding on eggshells with me. And so when I went to fire him, like he actually started crying and was like, dude, like I didn't, like, why is this happening? And the problem at this time is that the CEO that we had at the time, the managing partner of the law firm hired a CEO who worked for an HR company. And so during the exit interview, the CEO stepped in and was like, hey, you know why you're being fired. And this is the last conversation I had with this man. This is almost 10 years ago now. And it's one of the biggest regrets of my life how I went about firing him. I needed to fire him. I didn't let him know why he was being fired and it was messed up essentially. And so what this showed me was that I had a level, there was a level of neglect in my life. Like if I look at my own life, I kind of do struggle with cleanliness and stuff like that. I literally went and just got my truck detailed recently because it was kind of nasty. What I... came to understand in a, so that of course that wasn't an entrepreneur, but it was semi-entrepreneurial because I was the first employee. I had a lot of control of the company. I have been forced on many occasions to address my own, like in an entrepreneur environment, because the risk is so high and you're taking on 100% of the outcomes, when problems show up in your business, they can almost always be attributed back to a flaw in the founder. And so, Fast forward years later, I had a problematic employee, someone like this, where it was a remote environment, they were kind of taking advantage of the situation, they weren't getting things done. Because of my experience back with this employee at the legal startup, I was abundantly clear with this new employee, which was like, hey, this is like, your output is not acceptable. And like over the course of multiple meetings, I would say like, this is not acceptable, these are my expectations. I believe them to be reasonable, you are not meeting these expectations. All that fast forward to when the day I needed to fire this young man later, it was completely cordial because at the end of the day, I was very clear with my expectations to him. He understood them. He didn't meet them. And me and this young man are friends to this day, even though that I fired him. And that's the difference. It's because I became somebody who was forthcoming with my emotions and my expectations. And that has that has spilled out into my relationships with people outside of the business sphere. One of the biggest benefits of becoming an entrepreneur is because when everything becomes your fault, and because the mistakes are all magnified. I've made $150,000 mistakes running my company, not putting things into contracts. So when a client says, oh, why did you build this? I'm not paying for this. In my mind, I know that they agreed to work on this. Everything, especially in a client and a professional services context, everything needs to show up into a contract. Now, someone listening to this is going to gloss over that. But if this was me listening to this podcast many years ago, I would say that is the biggest mistake I've made in my professional services company, is not putting everything into a contract that, hey, this is what we're gonna do, this is how much it's gonna cost, and this is when it's gonna be done. That not doing that has cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars. And all that is... is tied to the concept of being a man of your word. And that's what the whole contract is. It's an explicit representation of this company is going to follow their word. There are gonna be legal and financial ramifications otherwise. So in terms of the entrepreneurial journey, just to wrap it all up, one of the greatest benefits is that it has forced me to become a better human being, a better man, someone with more character because the mistakes. hurt so much more. They're magnified. They're quadrupled. They're quintupled. And so while it hurts and it's very painful, like being an entrepreneur, you can't really afford to avoid your flaws because your flaws are going to show up over and over again on the bottom line, the top line and the middle lines of like the beauty of entrepreneurship is it all shows up in the numbers.
Brendan Ryan:
Yeah,
Joshua Plicque:
Like in terms of
Brendan Ryan:
yeah,
Joshua Plicque:
accounting,
Brendan Ryan:
absolutely.
Joshua Plicque:
it's either going
Brendan Ryan:
I've
Joshua Plicque:
to
Brendan Ryan:
heard
Joshua Plicque:
show
Brendan Ryan:
people
Joshua Plicque:
up in
Brendan Ryan:
say that.
Joshua Plicque:
lack of revenue. It's going
Brendan Ryan:
Yeah.
Joshua Plicque:
to show up in higher expenses or it's going to show up in
Brendan Ryan:
Oh,
Joshua Plicque:
profit
Brendan Ryan:
about
Joshua Plicque:
not made.
Brendan Ryan:
like your business
Joshua Plicque:
And
Brendan Ryan:
problems
Joshua Plicque:
those mistakes
Brendan Ryan:
being
Joshua Plicque:
can
Brendan Ryan:
reflective
Joshua Plicque:
almost
Brendan Ryan:
of
Joshua Plicque:
always,
Brendan Ryan:
your
Joshua Plicque:
in
Brendan Ryan:
own
Joshua Plicque:
my experience,
Brendan Ryan:
personal problem.
Joshua Plicque:
be ascertained
Brendan Ryan:
I forget
Joshua Plicque:
back
Brendan Ryan:
where I heard
Joshua Plicque:
to
Brendan Ryan:
that.
Joshua Plicque:
a character
Brendan Ryan:
Um,
Joshua Plicque:
defect in
Brendan Ryan:
I
Joshua Plicque:
the
Brendan Ryan:
want
Joshua Plicque:
founder
Brendan Ryan:
to say it was
Joshua Plicque:
that
Brendan Ryan:
somebody
Joshua Plicque:
they need to
Brendan Ryan:
on
Joshua Plicque:
work on.
Brendan Ryan:
Twitter recently, but yeah, I, I.
Joshua Plicque:
That's crazy, right? Isn't that insane?
Brendan Ryan:
Yeah, I think
Joshua Plicque:
Where have
Brendan Ryan:
it's
Joshua Plicque:
you
Brendan Ryan:
a
Joshua Plicque:
heard
Brendan Ryan:
hundred
Joshua Plicque:
someone
Brendan Ryan:
percent
Joshua Plicque:
say that?
Brendan Ryan:
true though, but that, that was an awesome story that you gave there about, you know, the firing back, back
Joshua Plicque:
Yeah,
Brendan Ryan:
in the
Joshua Plicque:
yeah.
Brendan Ryan:
day when you were less experienced
Joshua Plicque:
Yeah.
Brendan Ryan:
versus how you fire now, how you set expectations, how you grew. through that. And I think that,
Joshua Plicque:
Yeah, it's like unexpected,
Brendan Ryan:
you know,
Joshua Plicque:
right?
Brendan Ryan:
it's an interesting perspective that you have. I think, you know, ultimately, what it makes me think is that when the stakes are higher, like they are in entrepreneurship, because the stakes are very low in being an employee or in school, like you were saying about it not being real when you're in college, because there are essentially are no stakes, you can, you can fail, make mistakes, etc. And it's all fake anyway, right? But when the stakes are real and when the stakes are big, it almost forces you to learn faster, a lot faster than otherwise, right? So I think that's really cool. I think that's an interesting perspective that I've personally never heard before. So kudos for that, man. You're teaching me things. What you said about that whole firing thing really makes me think about the
Joshua Plicque:
Right,
Brendan Ryan:
connection
Joshua Plicque:
right.
Brendan Ryan:
between entrepreneurship and leadership. I think that in the beginning stages of entrepreneurship, it's maybe not so much necessarily about leadership. It depends on how you launch, right? Like a lot of people I think nowadays because it's so easy to start an online business, so many people are solopreneurs or something like that, that there is essentially no leadership component to it. But if you were somebody that took out an SBA loan and bought an already established business, you're thrusted into a leadership position right from the get go. And no matter what, eventually you're going to run into that, especially if you're successful in entrepreneurship. Once you scale your business, you're going to have to hire people, you're going to have to manage people. And so that brings in a whole different skill set. And so yeah, I think that that is a perfect example really of how entrepreneurship is about self-discovery and self-improvement, especially in that case. But what are your thoughts about? that in general, like entrepreneurship and leadership. Do you think of them as the same thing or do you think of them as, you know, totally different?
Joshua Plicque:
Yeah, so I do think that they're very tightly connected. And the reason why is because when you're an entrepreneur, you're forging a new reality. You're going into a hungry marketplace and you're trying to forge and create money that is being directed to other places, you're trying to get it directed towards you. And so that money, of course, that means a lot to people. And so it's competitive. And so- You're forging a new reality. One, that's so what we're talking about is vision. A entrepreneur must have a vision for the future that doesn't exist already. That's a big part of leadership. Two, you have to be able to communicate said vision. The reason why the biggest leaders of our past are so well respected is because their ability to communicate their visions, their visions to the masses, whether it be Steve Jobs, whether it be Abraham Lincoln. I'm trying to think of a lady person. Margaret Thatcher. Like, the reason why these people are respected as leaders is because of their ability to have vision, to communicate said vision. And then three, this is a one that is not as well known, is willingness to embrace the unknown. And this is the reason why someone like a Winston Churchill is so well respected, because literally they had death and they had the future of humanity on their doorsteps. We're talking about England being bombed from France. Literally, the German forces went all the way through France and they are bombing the island of the United Kingdom. And this is the final stand of humanity in World War II. Like it doesn't get more, it doesn't get more dramatic than that. And this is a man who's been known, I don't know what he was doing at that time. He was known for taking naps throughout the day. And that's the reason why we respect someone like a Winston Churchill or a General MacArthur. because these people were able to withstand the pressure and the stress of leadership. And that's the burden of leadership. The burden of leadership is that the responsibility falls on your shoulders. So in regards to entrepreneurship, when you first start off, so something I want to address with respect to entrepreneurship is that it's not all sunshine and rainbows. Because when you start off as an entrepreneur, typically you're a what's called a technician. You're somebody who is, hey, I am a pharmacist, and I deal out these dosages. I don't really know what a pharmacist does. I just know it's drugs. For, I'm a coder, and I code people's problems, and I solve them with a repeatable loop of code that makes it so that no human has to think about this. So this is what a technician does. But then, when you start off as an entrepreneur, you're no longer responsible for only your job. You now have to do sales. You now have to do marketing. You now have to do bookkeeping. You now have to add. You have to get company insurance for yourself. You also need to get general liability insurance for your company so that if you do get sued, you don't go under. All these different things that you now have to think about means that you're now going to be working the job of about three or four different people. So especially at the very beginning, you go from working... 40 hours a week to working 80 hours a week, 70 hours a week, 60 hours a week. And the reason why that's necessary is because you have to continue to do the actual work that's fulfilling the outcome of the business. But you're now responsible for all the other elements of attracting new people, getting people to actually give you money, following up with people who said they were going to give you money collections, like things that you never had to think about. You have to do all these things now as an entrepreneur. And so guess what? The only way out of that, there's only one way out of that problem. You have to hire people. And once you hire people, you're now responsible for them getting that job done that you were previously doing. And that's a big mistake a lot of entrepreneurs make that they think that they're special. I was dating this lady that she runs a lash salon. She's like a lash specialist. And one of her, one of my complaints about her as an entrepreneur is that she thinks that only she can do like the customer service level that is up to her standard. And so the reason why that's a bad thought process is because it naturally leads to you being unable to scale because then you're gonna be like, you're gonna be hiring people and then you're gonna be expecting them not to be able to give the same level of customer service that you are. It's just unscalable, it's an unscalable thought process. You need to be thinking of your business eventually as a machine where money comes in and people's problems come in and then you transform it and you end up with an excellent result for their customer. where they feel like they have higher value than they spent at the very beginning. And if you think that you're special or that nobody can do it like you, you're, this is ultimately like what we were talking about, Brendan, about like the kind of things, like that's a, it's a character defect. And the reason why you know it's a character defect because there are trillion dollar companies, you know, people love Chick-fil-A's and Starbucks, but guess what? At the end of the day, all that stuff is because of culture and employee manuals. The reason why those companies are amazing is because of they've been able to
Brendan Ryan:
Yeah, man.
Joshua Plicque:
systematize
Brendan Ryan:
I,
Joshua Plicque:
excellent
Brendan Ryan:
I,
Joshua Plicque:
customer
Brendan Ryan:
I,
Joshua Plicque:
service.
Brendan Ryan:
no, no, I think that
Joshua Plicque:
So
Brendan Ryan:
that's a
Joshua Plicque:
to
Brendan Ryan:
great
Joshua Plicque:
say
Brendan Ryan:
topic.
Joshua Plicque:
that you're
Brendan Ryan:
And
Joshua Plicque:
special
Brendan Ryan:
I actually
Joshua Plicque:
and
Brendan Ryan:
want
Joshua Plicque:
that only
Brendan Ryan:
to
Joshua Plicque:
you can do that
Brendan Ryan:
ask
Joshua Plicque:
customer
Brendan Ryan:
you a
Joshua Plicque:
service,
Brendan Ryan:
couple of questions
Joshua Plicque:
it's
Brendan Ryan:
about
Joshua Plicque:
false.
Brendan Ryan:
that. The whole
Joshua Plicque:
It's
Brendan Ryan:
hiring
Joshua Plicque:
not real
Brendan Ryan:
to scale
Joshua Plicque:
because
Brendan Ryan:
your
Joshua Plicque:
we
Brendan Ryan:
business
Joshua Plicque:
see
Brendan Ryan:
thing,
Joshua Plicque:
it
Brendan Ryan:
because
Joshua Plicque:
at
Brendan Ryan:
I agree
Joshua Plicque:
the
Brendan Ryan:
with
Joshua Plicque:
billion
Brendan Ryan:
you. I think,
Joshua Plicque:
dollar, trillion
Brendan Ryan:
especially
Joshua Plicque:
dollar
Brendan Ryan:
in the past,
Joshua Plicque:
scale.
Brendan Ryan:
that was a hundred percent true. But point
Joshua Plicque:
Yeah,
Brendan Ryan:
number
Joshua Plicque:
I don't
Brendan Ryan:
one
Joshua Plicque:
know where
Brendan Ryan:
is
Joshua Plicque:
we're at. What were we talking
Brendan Ryan:
globalization
Joshua Plicque:
about?
Brendan Ryan:
is happening, whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing. You know, I don't really want to debate that on the podcast, right? But globalization is happening. And. In a lot of industries, getting overseas talent has enabled people or entrepreneurs to scale a lot faster because there's a big arbitrage in terms of how strong the dollar is here versus somewhere like Colombia or Pakistan or whatever it might be. So you might be able to hire employees to do certain things for you in a remote fashion so that you can still have a decent profit margin to... grow and scale your business, right? Whereas you, if you were to go hire American talent, it can be quite expensive. Now I know in your particular industry, in software in particular, that is a lot harder to do. I think that it is possible, right? To hire overseas talent, better coders, but it seems like the norm there is that the standard of work is a lot lower in that case. And that can be true for anything else as well. But what are your thoughts on that? Because I think that that is the future really. I really think that, I don't even think it's the future actually. I think it's the current state of affairs. I think if you're not already hiring overseas, at least for some portion of your business, you're already kind of at a disadvantage. And the reason I say that is because if you think about it, big companies have already been doing this for decades. or whatever outsource a lot of their labor overseas because of that, because there's such a huge arbitrage. And now with the advent of so many entrepreneurs starting these online businesses, you see them hiring people from the Philippines or whatever in order to grow and scale their businesses. And I think, I actually think it's a really good thing. It gives those people a really good job. It creates jobs for people overseas. It enables you to connect with other cultures and all that kind of thing. That said, you know, there's of course some downsides, some cons to that, but what are your thoughts on that whole idea?
Joshua Plicque:
If you're not leveraging remote work, you're making a mistake in the modern economy. And the reason why is because with the increased globalization, you have access to talent, especially in the software world. It started off with just remote people, where when I was hiring back at the legal startup, I was literally, I was very opposed to remote work. Hey, I wanna be able to see people, see that they're working. I was unable to source the people that I needed in Jackson, Florida. I was forced by default to... engage in remote work. So we hired people in Virginia, Missouri, Michigan, and we were able to find those people online. And so of course, the downside to that is there's two major downsides that I'm aware of, which is, you know, it's hard to maintain a company culture remotely. Because you know, you don't have the kind of tribal knowledge moments that you do, everything must be more explicit in a remote world. The reason why is because there's no like, you know, getting into the office five minutes early and you're chatting with your boss and you find out about this document that was in the corner of the office, like none of that exists in a remote world because everything is much more explicit. So that means you must be more organized and ultimately you can't see people do the work. And so you don't know if you're actually getting what the value that you're expecting. And so you have to be more explicit about what are your expectations. Like everything is much, needs to be much clearer in a remote environment. Here are my expectations. Here's when I expect you to actually be working. You know, a lot of remote environments are completely loosey-goosey. Hey, work whenever, however. I personally don't believe in that. I believe that people should be starting work at the same time every single day. But that's a whole nother thing. Like, in the, so one, if you're not leveraging remote work, you're making a mistake. Two, it is now easier than ever to use people from overseas. to get things done and they're naturally going to be cheaper. Now the counter to that is because they're going to be cheaper, all they're going to be concerned with is getting things done. And this is the reason why there still are software engineers in the United States that are making $400,000, $500,000, $600,000 a year. The reason why is because these people don't have as much incentive to just get it done. I've had a lot of opportunity in my career as a software consultant because of people hiring overseas labor, they're literally just picked, the term is called cash for buttons. I'll give you cash, you give me my buttons. And so these people aren't incentivized to do a good job because their wealth equation is based off of I get paid a fixed amount and so the faster that I can get it done, no matter how many corners I cut, that's going to be the source of my profit because they're already getting less money because they have weaker economies. So in a remote globalized world, there's a trade-off in the sense that these people are gonna be incentivized to just get the job done as fast as possible. And that may not be what you need. And so in a remote world, you need to be forever vigilant. You need to be forever vigilant about your internal company processes. They need to be very, very clear, very explicit, and then your expectations for the people in regards to the quality control. Because when you're working in a remote environment, People are, the natural economic incentive is to just get things done as fast as possible. So if I have a 40 hour a week job,
Brendan Ryan:
Yeah,
Joshua Plicque:
if I can get
Brendan Ryan:
so
Joshua Plicque:
it done
Brendan Ryan:
well
Joshua Plicque:
in
Brendan Ryan:
said,
Joshua Plicque:
Brendan Ryan:
man.
Joshua Plicque:
hours
Brendan Ryan:
I
Joshua Plicque:
a week,
Brendan Ryan:
totally agree.
Joshua Plicque:
then it's theoretically
Brendan Ryan:
You really have
Joshua Plicque:
possible
Brendan Ryan:
to have
Joshua Plicque:
that
Brendan Ryan:
the
Joshua Plicque:
I could
Brendan Ryan:
SOPs
Joshua Plicque:
work four jobs.
Brendan Ryan:
dialed
Joshua Plicque:
This
Brendan Ryan:
in
Joshua Plicque:
is what
Brendan Ryan:
very,
Joshua Plicque:
remote
Brendan Ryan:
very
Joshua Plicque:
work
Brendan Ryan:
well.
Joshua Plicque:
allows.
Brendan Ryan:
Like really down
Joshua Plicque:
And so
Brendan Ryan:
to the
Joshua Plicque:
this is
Brendan Ryan:
absolute
Joshua Plicque:
why
Brendan Ryan:
details
Joshua Plicque:
having processes, quality
Brendan Ryan:
when you're
Joshua Plicque:
control,
Brendan Ryan:
hiring
Joshua Plicque:
is really important
Brendan Ryan:
a remote,
Joshua Plicque:
to
Brendan Ryan:
whether
Joshua Plicque:
prevent
Brendan Ryan:
that is, you
Joshua Plicque:
the
Brendan Ryan:
know,
Joshua Plicque:
capitalistic
Brendan Ryan:
within the U S
Joshua Plicque:
incentives
Brendan Ryan:
like you're describing, um,
Joshua Plicque:
that could
Brendan Ryan:
you know,
Joshua Plicque:
work
Brendan Ryan:
if you're
Joshua Plicque:
against
Brendan Ryan:
in Florida
Joshua Plicque:
you in
Brendan Ryan:
hiring
Joshua Plicque:
a remote
Brendan Ryan:
in
Joshua Plicque:
world.
Brendan Ryan:
Virginia, but especially, especially if you're hiring overseas, you really got to dial it all the way down and list every little thing that you think may not be necessary. 100% agree. The other thing I wanted to ask you about with regards to hiring in order to scale your business is the idea of leveraging and you're, you're, you know, you're a tech guy, you're a coder, you're in software, but with the advent of the AI age, the artificial intelligence age, I already see people leveraging this, right? For instance, I guess that I had on my podcast a few weeks ago, you met him the other day at a cigar bar, Jonathan Green. does this in his own business. I don't know how this guy does it. Like he is an absolute whiz with hooking up chat GPT to everything apparently, but I've actually seen him do it. So he's not just blowing smoke, but this idea that creating systems might even be better than hiring actual people, especially systems that involve AI. What are your thoughts there? Have you played with AI at all? And what do you see?
Joshua Plicque:
Right,
Brendan Ryan:
as
Joshua Plicque:
right.
Brendan Ryan:
the future with regards to that.
Joshua Plicque:
Yeah, so artificial intelligence I'm very bullish on. I think it is inevitable at this point with the advent of chat GPT-3 coming out and kind of reaching the cultural zeitgeist. It became obvious to the world that artificial intelligence is for everyone and it's pretty much free. I use artificial intelligence almost on a near daily basis at this point. And the reason why, the reason why it's so powerful is because instead of having to go to Google and having to figure out what the result is within millions of results. Of course, we probably only look at the first three or five pages. Artificial intelligence advantage is actually giving you the result precisely upfront. And so it's more efficient and it's more accurate. And so we live in a world where artificial intelligence is undeniable at this point. It is inevitable. I think that it's so far. The level of innovation that's coming out at this point is almost scary. I think that we're going to get to a point with it where we're going to have some serious ethical concerns because there was a story that came out recently where this guy went to a veterinarian clinic. He had a border collie and he couldn't figure out what was wrong with his dog or something like that. And he got some diagnostics run on his dog. He took it to some vets and they were unable to figure out what the problem was. was with his border collie. He put in those diagnostic results into chat gbt and he was able to get a a very high accuracy diagnosis for his dog not dealing with any professional at all. Chat gbt was able to figure out what was wrong with his dog and he was able to take that to a vet and someone was like oh yeah that's right and he was able to actually get the care for his animal that he wasn't able to
Brendan Ryan:
out.
Joshua Plicque:
get from human beings who are highly trained and have years of So this is the world we live in where, I mean, I saw another one on LinkedIn the other day where this lady's breast cancer was detected four years in advance before any human eye could detect the breast cancer. So they were able to knock it out quickly. Like the end result of artificial intelligence at this point is going to be excellent human outcomes. But we're also going to see where artificial intelligence, they're gonna have police robots. They have bomb strapped robots that are going into buildings. and blowing up people. Artificial intelligence is going to save lives. Artificial intelligence is going to kill people. And so, like, this is, it's already happening. And so, it's undeniable and you should be using it, in my opinion, or you will be falling behind. If you're not using artificial intelligence at this point, you are falling behind. And it's easy to use. It's easy. Like, there's no excuse. So, everybody should be using it because it's awesome, it's easy to use.
Brendan Ryan:
Yeah.
Joshua Plicque:
I think the ethical
Brendan Ryan:
I
Joshua Plicque:
concerns
Brendan Ryan:
mean,
Joshua Plicque:
are very
Brendan Ryan:
I think it's already here, right? It's not a
Joshua Plicque:
concerning
Brendan Ryan:
matter of it's going to exist.
Joshua Plicque:
in the
Brendan Ryan:
It
Joshua Plicque:
future,
Brendan Ryan:
already does.
Joshua Plicque:
but that's not
Brendan Ryan:
And
Joshua Plicque:
going
Brendan Ryan:
so
Joshua Plicque:
to change
Brendan Ryan:
I think
Joshua Plicque:
whether
Brendan Ryan:
I've heard
Joshua Plicque:
this is going to
Brendan Ryan:
not
Joshua Plicque:
exist
Brendan Ryan:
just
Joshua Plicque:
or not.
Brendan Ryan:
you,
Joshua Plicque:
This
Brendan Ryan:
but
Joshua Plicque:
is
Brendan Ryan:
multiple
Joshua Plicque:
100%
Brendan Ryan:
people
Joshua Plicque:
going
Brendan Ryan:
say, like,
Joshua Plicque:
to exist.
Brendan Ryan:
if you're not using
Joshua Plicque:
If you
Brendan Ryan:
it
Joshua Plicque:
can't
Brendan Ryan:
already,
Joshua Plicque:
beat them, join
Brendan Ryan:
you're falling
Joshua Plicque:
them.
Brendan Ryan:
behind. And I 100% agree because
Joshua Plicque:
Join
Brendan Ryan:
it's
Joshua Plicque:
the
Brendan Ryan:
going
Joshua Plicque:
robot
Brendan Ryan:
to be
Joshua Plicque:
overlords.
Brendan Ryan:
incredibly
Joshua Plicque:
Ha ha ha.
Brendan Ryan:
disruptive, incredibly disruptive in terms of all kinds of jobs for all kinds of people. Right? But if you do
Joshua Plicque:
Right.
Brendan Ryan:
get in the habit of using it now, you position yourself. Go ahead. Yeah.
Joshua Plicque:
Right. Oh, can I just, I wanna make a point about, Brendan, I just wanna make a point about specifically what you just said about all kinds of jobs for all kinds of people. I think that the general conception is that artificial intelligence is going to kill jobs. I think that in the far future, that is probably true, maybe 15 years ago. But if we look at, just on a positive note, if you look at human innovation, I mean, we're talking about the printing press, the mobile phone. the cell phone, the radio, human flight, all these things, the factory, the Industrial Revolution, all these things were game breaking, game changing innovations, and yet we still have, we live in a world where unemployment is at some of the lowest levels in history. Society adapts, humanity adapts, new jobs are always created, the milkman doesn't exist anymore. The video retail store blockbuster doesn't exist anymore. But now we have new things. There's Netflix, people work at Netflix, customers support at Netflix. So there's always going to be a job. The person who's coming for your job is not gonna be a robot. The person that's coming for your job is someone who's using artificial intelligence. The artificial intelligence person is going to be as productive as up to two to five people. And so that's what, when I say that you're falling behind by not using artificial intelligence, It's because if you refuse to use it, the person that's gonna, it's gonna be a Generation Z person who's using artificial intelligence, is running circles around everybody else in the organization. And so, oh, redundancy, you know, corporate economics. We're gonna drop some people, layoffs, layoffs. We don't need all these people. If
Brendan Ryan:
Yeah,
Joshua Plicque:
you're not
Brendan Ryan:
yeah,
Joshua Plicque:
using
Brendan Ryan:
I
Joshua Plicque:
artificial
Brendan Ryan:
think
Joshua Plicque:
intelligence,
Brendan Ryan:
ultimately,
Joshua Plicque:
someone who
Brendan Ryan:
like
Joshua Plicque:
is
Brendan Ryan:
you said, it will
Joshua Plicque:
going
Brendan Ryan:
kill
Joshua Plicque:
to take
Brendan Ryan:
jobs,
Joshua Plicque:
your job.
Brendan Ryan:
it will disrupt
Joshua Plicque:
All
Brendan Ryan:
a
Joshua Plicque:
you
Brendan Ryan:
lot
Joshua Plicque:
have to
Brendan Ryan:
of
Joshua Plicque:
do
Brendan Ryan:
industries.
Joshua Plicque:
is start using
Brendan Ryan:
But
Joshua Plicque:
it.
Brendan Ryan:
right
Joshua Plicque:
It's very
Brendan Ryan:
now,
Joshua Plicque:
easy to use.
Brendan Ryan:
as
Joshua Plicque:
There's
Brendan Ryan:
it stands
Joshua Plicque:
no
Brendan Ryan:
right
Joshua Plicque:
reason
Brendan Ryan:
now,
Joshua Plicque:
to be
Brendan Ryan:
it's
Joshua Plicque:
afraid
Brendan Ryan:
actually creating
Joshua Plicque:
because
Brendan Ryan:
jobs.
Joshua Plicque:
ultimately
Brendan Ryan:
I'm already seeing
Joshua Plicque:
with innovation,
Brendan Ryan:
job listings for
Joshua Plicque:
Throughout,
Brendan Ryan:
quote
Joshua Plicque:
we
Brendan Ryan:
unquote,
Joshua Plicque:
can look at
Brendan Ryan:
prompt
Joshua Plicque:
all of
Brendan Ryan:
engineers,
Joshua Plicque:
human history.
Brendan Ryan:
right?
Joshua Plicque:
It's not that
Brendan Ryan:
So
Joshua Plicque:
people
Brendan Ryan:
it's
Joshua Plicque:
are
Brendan Ryan:
definitely
Joshua Plicque:
just gonna be jobless.
Brendan Ryan:
in
Joshua Plicque:
The jobs are just going
Brendan Ryan:
in,
Joshua Plicque:
to change.
Brendan Ryan:
like you said, in the long term, it is 100% a plus for, you know, human life, it always is it's always scary. Everybody's always afraid that Oh, no, the the milkman job is going away or the ice man job is going away or whatever, but ultimately
Joshua Plicque:
Right.
Brendan Ryan:
it improves people's lives. So definitely agree, man. I need to have you back on the podcast because you are just a wealth of knowledge with regards to entrepreneurship. So we need to do this again sometimes because I feel like we could go on for two hours, but as it stands, I know that you're a little bit focused on some other ventures in your life right now, but Where can people find you if they want to know more about software? I know that you are an expert in the coding language of Elixir in particular. So where can people find you if they want to know more?
Joshua Plicque:
Sure, yeah, so I'm active on Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Under my name, Joshua Plick, last name, P-L-I-C-Q-U-E, and my company, Or Equals. Of course, I'm kind of shutting down the public side of doing software. I'm doing it on a personal level, so I had four or five employees, but right now I'm kind of focusing on transitioning into building my own intellectual property, because I was just. The wealth equation that I was talking about was purely linear. I needed more clients. I needed more employees. And so what I'm doing at this point in my life is building my
Brendan Ryan:
Awesome,
Joshua Plicque:
own,
Brendan Ryan:
awesome
Joshua Plicque:
whether
Brendan Ryan:
man.
Joshua Plicque:
it be
Brendan Ryan:
Well,
Joshua Plicque:
stock
Brendan Ryan:
we look
Joshua Plicque:
trading
Brendan Ryan:
forward to
Joshua Plicque:
algorithm,
Brendan Ryan:
the software that you'll be producing
Joshua Plicque:
something
Brendan Ryan:
for
Joshua Plicque:
for
Brendan Ryan:
poker
Joshua Plicque:
poker
Brendan Ryan:
players
Joshua Plicque:
players,
Brendan Ryan:
or for trading or whatever
Joshua Plicque:
like some
Brendan Ryan:
it
Joshua Plicque:
sort
Brendan Ryan:
might
Joshua Plicque:
of like
Brendan Ryan:
be.
Joshua Plicque:
helping people
Brendan Ryan:
And
Joshua Plicque:
improve,
Brendan Ryan:
definitely, like
Joshua Plicque:
whether
Brendan Ryan:
I said,
Joshua Plicque:
it be artificial
Brendan Ryan:
I wanna have you
Joshua Plicque:
intelligence.
Brendan Ryan:
back on because
Joshua Plicque:
I'm kind of transitioning
Brendan Ryan:
you were dropping
Joshua Plicque:
into working
Brendan Ryan:
bombs there, man.
Joshua Plicque:
for the
Brendan Ryan:
I
Joshua Plicque:
world
Brendan Ryan:
think people
Joshua Plicque:
part
Brendan Ryan:
got
Joshua Plicque:
time
Brendan Ryan:
a
Joshua Plicque:
and then working for myself
Brendan Ryan:
lot of
Joshua Plicque:
part time
Brendan Ryan:
value,
Joshua Plicque:
so that I can
Brendan Ryan:
especially
Joshua Plicque:
actually build
Brendan Ryan:
when you're
Joshua Plicque:
something
Brendan Ryan:
going
Joshua Plicque:
that
Brendan Ryan:
through
Joshua Plicque:
has an exponential outcome.
Brendan Ryan:
MJ
Joshua Plicque:
So...
Brendan Ryan:
DeMarco's book. So
Joshua Plicque:
As soon as you
Brendan Ryan:
I
Joshua Plicque:
can
Brendan Ryan:
think
Joshua Plicque:
find
Brendan Ryan:
that
Joshua Plicque:
me at
Brendan Ryan:
helps
Joshua Plicque:
orequals.com,
Brendan Ryan:
a lot of people
Joshua Plicque:
you
Brendan Ryan:
try
Joshua Plicque:
can
Brendan Ryan:
to
Joshua Plicque:
find
Brendan Ryan:
figure
Joshua Plicque:
me by
Brendan Ryan:
out
Joshua Plicque:
just
Brendan Ryan:
what
Joshua Plicque:
looking
Brendan Ryan:
is
Joshua Plicque:
up my name,
Brendan Ryan:
a good
Joshua Plicque:
Joshua Plick,
Brendan Ryan:
business
Joshua Plicque:
P-L-I-C-Q-U-E
Brendan Ryan:
model to pursue,
Joshua Plicque:
on all socials,
Brendan Ryan:
right? And not get
Joshua Plicque:
and
Brendan Ryan:
stuck
Joshua Plicque:
yeah,
Brendan Ryan:
in
Joshua Plicque:
you can
Brendan Ryan:
that.
Joshua Plicque:
get in touch with me.
Brendan Ryan:
inability to scale, right? So if you find yourself in that position, if you're kind of in the beginning of the entrepreneurship journey and you haven't read the E-Myth revisited, you need to check that out because that's a common problem that people get stuck with in the very beginning is they can't figure out how to get out of that technician role and really become the actual entrepreneur. So, but if you're not, if you're just thinking about, you know, making the leap and becoming an entrepreneur, I highly, highly... encourage you to do it. Please reach out to me. Reach out to Josh. We'd love to help you. Love to get to know you. Join us. Make the jump into entrepreneurship. Make the transition, if you will, from employee to entrepreneur. And we'll see you.