Revolutionizing Team Management Through AI-Powered Behavioral Data With Jason P. Carroll

Speaker A: All right, today we're talking about how to leverage AI combined with behavioral data in order to manage your team more effectively, deal with interpersonal dynamics that you have to deal with in business, even manage your personal relationships. My guest today is Jason P. Carroll. He's an expert in this stuff, so stay tuned and he's going to tell us a lot more about it.

Speaker B: Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution podcast, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders and thought leaders and ask them how they built key relationships chips to get where they are today. Now, let's get started with the show.

Speaker A: Hey, everyone, John H. Corcoran here. I am the host of the show. And, you know, if you've listened before that. Each week I Talk to smart CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs from all kinds of companies. And if you check out the archives, we've got past episodes with Netflix, grubhub, redfin, Gusto, Kinko. Lots of great episodes. So go check those out. And of course, this episode brought to you by Rise25, where we help be B2B businesses get clients, referrals and strategic partnerships with done for you podcasts and content marketing. And you can learn more about what we do by going to our recently completely revamped website, rise25.com or emailing our team at supportise25.com all right, I'm super excited about this one. So if you've ever heard of Culture Index, Predictive Index, Myers Squibb, uh, Colby, there's a million other ones. There's all these different assessments out there that have been around for 30 years. Well, guess what? There's an AI revolution happening right now. And a lot of people are wondering, how is AI going to affect the way that you hire, the way that you promote, who you work with, maybe even who you choose as a spouse. And so our guest today, Jason Bucaroll, is the founder and CEO of Active Index. It's a psychometric technology company that helps organizations to build stronger teams by leveraging behavioral science using AI and all those different backgrounds. And so I'm really excited about having him here today. Jason, thank you for coming here today. And let's start with, first of all, I love to get to know Mike, guess a little bit of what they were like as a kid. And, uh, you, you know, naturally, you know, people start with babysitting, lemonade stands, stuff like that. So you naturally started with working for an H Vac company. That's an interesting one. So tell us a little bit about how you get into H Vac.

Speaker C: Yeah, well, the. The lawn Mowing and the babysitting also happened prior to that. But, uh, 14 years old was, uh, my dad's friend David. Ran, uh, an H VAC company. And you know, he was getting old. He was a fireman primarily, but this H Vac company and needed somebody to crawl up in those 130 degree attics and do the ductwork for them. And I was like, you can hire me. And so it was kind of a child labor, cash under the table type of deal.

Speaker A: That is brutal. Difficult work. We had to replace our H Vac system about a year ago. And crawling up in those attics, especially when it's hot out, man, tough work.

Speaker C: Yep, yep. Yeah, but what you reminds me, I had a warehouse job at 18 that was in Texas with no air conditioning. Uh, it probably explains why I'm always an AC now. Forevermore.

Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. And okay. That naturally, uh, transitions logically again into installing mini satellites with your mom. You started business with your mom installing mini satellites?

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, this is back early 90s. So the satellite dishes used to be those big ginormous things that would pivot.

Speaker A: Yeah. And so like in the 80s, like the size of a fricking house or a bedroom house. Yeah, they're huge.

Speaker C: Yeah, we had one of them. Yeah, for sure. And so the mini ones came out the Dish networks and I don't remember

Speaker A: who, uh, this is for television primarily then.

Speaker C: Yeah, for tv. So I got with my mom and said, hey, let's start selling these things. Like it's the new hottest thing, whatever. So she would sell over the phone, uh, like I'd tell a salesperson and I would go install them. Uh, I was 16 years old and first was doing it with my best friend Nick, and realized, man, I don't need his help. I can do this myself and make 80 bucks in about an hour and a half. Uh, which at 16 in the mid-90s was unbelievable.

Speaker A: Yeah, totally. Um, did your mom have a background? Had she done sales? Had she been an entrepreneur?

Speaker C: She was a stay at home mom. Uh, real kooky lady. Uh, it just happened to be that she was personable enough to. And bored enough, I think, uh, by that point in my life that she was willing to give it a shot. It was fun.

Speaker A: I want to hear a little bit, um, how you shaped your, um, opinions and thoughts on, you know, human personnel issues, um, relationship issues in the workplace. Um, you had a couple of different stops along the way. The most interesting, which we'll get to is you were president of Champion National Security, which you took from 20 to 80 million. That's incredible. Um, but even before that, you, you had a stint at Dell. Uh, I guess, as everyone who, uh, lives in Texas must do at some point. Right? That's, that's mandatory.

Speaker C: I think every Austinite. Yep.

Speaker A: Dell's interesting because Dell, you know, um, had some good culture and bad culture. Um, famously, Michael Dell came back to it at one point to try and revamp it, which he did. Uh, but tell me a little bit about what you learned through that experience.

Speaker C: Yeah, the, the real only career job I had before that was a terrible culture. Just boil a room, treat people horribly, toss, um, them to the street. It was really bad. Um, but it's all I knew. I was a college dropout and I was doing sales and, uh, then ended up at Dell and miraculously ended up under this leader called Nicole Collins. And she was a fantastic leader, probably one of the best I've ever met in my life and had cultivated this culture within a sales organization. I mean, that segment of Dell by itself was a Fortune 50 sized, um, revenue. Uh, and so, um, it was an incredible experience. And I saw how treating people with worth and value and promoting based on potential, not tenure and not nepotism. Um, I mean, I was, I was missing my quota. And she was promoting me because I invented a new role that I was like, I, you know, I'm missing my quota because selling 1% margin laptops is not what I'm built for. Uh, and it's stupid. We shouldn't be doing it anyways. Uh, like, that should be automated.

Speaker A: Eventually it went away primarily. Right. You know, you know, catalogs, Dell catalogs and then the Internet.

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. And so she, you know, let me invent a role, and it ended up working really well and built a whole team around it. And then Fed picked it up, major public accounts picked it up, and she's like, for some kid who is missing his quota, that's pretty radical risk taking. Uh, and it was just another leader

Speaker A: might have said, forget about him, he's gone.

Speaker C: Right? Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, it also, you know, just to reflect back on it, it kind of shows some, like, intrapreneurship, because you're innovating at that point. You're kind of like inventing a new company, much like an entrepreneur would.

Speaker C: Yeah, and I had done that at my previous company as well. I had started a whole new division of that company. Um, and, um, was. I really did think, hey, I'm just an entrepreneur. Uh, I never really had the opportunity to start my own thing. Uh, until between Dell and Champion. Um, that was social media and I made some mistakes there. Primarily I didn't get funding because I was being interred. Like I don't want somebody telling me what my vision should be.

Speaker A: And um, what was the vision there? What were you creating? Was it a service? Was an agency, it was a platform,

Speaker C: it was an agency. It was a good idea, not a great idea. It was like this is back way before pay to play with social media so you could actually get a viral audience. And if uh, you're a small business, a taco shop or a coffee shop, you could actually get people in the door if you did the right things with social media. Uh, and so we packaged that up in a way that would really help them reach local um, potential um, customers. And so um, what we did was great. Our service was awesome. But Main Street Hub was my primary competitor and they went and got bukus of funding multiple rounds and uh, it paid off for them. The year that I folded was the same year they sold to GoDaddy for 125 million.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker C: Uh, so I call that my 125 million dollar mistake.

Speaker A: Not raising money. You don't hear that often. A lot of times people on this show will say like I totally regret rating raising money. VCs are the devil. I should, I'm gonna bootstrap everything from here on in. So you don't hear that story very often.

Speaker C: Yeah. And it's not necessarily a how to story. Right. Uh, I didn't learn that I'm going to get funding. In fact Active Index is bootstrapped and I'm blessed enough to have an exit under my belt now. And so I'm self funding. Um, but I do have a consumer product I'm working on that's related to Active Index and for that to gain any sort of traction like B2C is a different animal. If I'm going to keep going down that route, I'm probably talking.

Speaker A: And you're competing with some big players as well. Yeah. So how does, how do you go from social medium to being president of a $20 million security uh, company?

Speaker C: Uh, it was a company my father had started back in 1980 and so he had grown it, uh, but they had been stagnant at about that 20 million mark for well over a decade. I was uh, 33 years old when I joined and he's one of those guys who um, was pretty similar to my first job experience. Yell uh, cuss, scream, all caps emails, pay people as little as you can, throw them to the curb when they don't do what you want. Uh, and, uh, he had been sending me offer letters for five years. You need to work for me, because I know Johnny's not going to. That's my younger brother, um, who thought I was insane to go work for, for Jim. Uh, but I finally kind of laid out my ultimatums. I'm like, look, if I'm going to do this, here are some of the things that's going to happen. And one of them had to do with culture. And, uh, he said to me at the time, and you might have to bleep this out. But he goes, uh, you can do your hippie dippy shit in Austin, but when it fails, you have to do it my way. Which all he met was valuing humans, uh, which turns out was the number one catalyst for the turnaround. So over that seven years I was there from 20 to 80 was radical.

Speaker A: After over 20 years, that's a radical change. Okay, so, ah, I don't want to understate how difficult this sounds. You step in, your father's running this company, been running it for, at that point, 30 years, I think.

Speaker C: Yep.

Speaker A: It has firmly established culture, and the culture is that he doesn't value people. He treats them like dirt. He's your father. And you step in, the kid, the people in the company, if they've been there long enough, remembers you in diapers. Right. And they have to suddenly take orders from you. I mean, that is a recipe for disaster. So tell me, what did you do in order. And also, you just had a failure under your belt. So, like, if it's me, I'm a little insecure going into that situation. Right. So, um, how. What did you do? What were the early things that you did in order to right the ship, change the culture, change the relationship with the team?

Speaker C: Well, I'd seen nepotism at work, and I was. I kind of swore that if I ever had an opportunity to step into any leadership, I wasn't going to go nuclear. I wasn't going to step in and have all the authority in the world. I was going to very slowly increment, uh, and earn trust.

Speaker A: Where had you seen that previously?

Speaker C: I had seen it done horribly at, um, my very first company that I was at for seven years. Uh, and then I had seen.

Speaker A: You'd seen like a separate, like a second generation come in and it. Tell me about that.

Speaker C: I, uh, mean, it's the tales all the time, as time. I mean, it's, you know, somebody's kid comes in or somebody's brother is over here and somebody's cousins over here. I mean, that company had, you know, just nepotism everywhere.

Speaker A: Oh, so a lot of it.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker C: I mean, I walked into that place my first day on the job, 100% commission sales. And you know, in the parking lot are all these like brand new cars and Harleys and Corvettes. You know, I'm not like. And then I meet these guys, I'm like, if these ass clowns can make this kind of money, I'm going to kill it here.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And only took me like a year to become like top three salespeople out of like 50 plus.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And I'm not even good at sales. They were just a bunch of non motivated, you know, daddy brother gave me an account base, you know.

Speaker A: Um, and this experience teaches you that in back your mind you're thinking, if I were someday to go into the company that my father founded, I'm going to do it very differently.

Speaker C: Yeah. Really any leadership position, whether there's nepotism or not, um, like I. Earning trust is really paramount. Um, so I kind of stayed in my lane at first. I was like, hey, like this company's in the stone age. Literally everything's pen and paper.

Speaker A: We're back to talking about champion now.

Speaker C: Champion, yeah.

Speaker A: So you step into champion and then you, you, you're kind of like this thing's in the stone age. It's 2014, 2015, and they're doing, still doing things on paper. You're saying, okay, all right.

Speaker C: Yeah. So you take a little while, take

Speaker A: a little while to get comfortable in there instead of like ripping stuff up as soon as you step in.

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Because I wasn't the president of the company at first.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: I was, I was just a, uh, uh, technology lackey, essentially. It was kind of how I brought myself in. M. You know, knowing that deliberate.

Speaker A: Was that your choice? Was that your father's choice?

Speaker C: It was mutual. Uh, he didn't want somebody pressing his buttons. But I also didn't want, you know, these guys. Bill was the director of ops. He had been there for 14 years. Yeah, just a machine. A guy's awesome. And I know that he's going to see me coming in as a threat and I don't want that. Um, because I also don't want his job. I don't want to do ops. And so, um, yeah, I just came in, stayed in my lane with technology first, um, then started doing a lot of culture initiatives and people and um, eventually started saying, hey, what if we put some other strategic initiatives in place, uh, with, um, like overall company. Not just culture, but company vision. I mean, the company had no vision, no core values, no mission statement, Nothing.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker C: For 30 years.

Speaker A: It was amazing to get to 20 million without those pieces in place.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, it was pretty, pretty incredible. And so, um, that's really, I think what won over the leadership team was I scheduled this retreat, we went out, we ended up implementing EOS eventually. But, uh, this first retreat was just more of a, let's get away from it all and let's talk strategy from a super high level. And, um, use some of the traction EOS methodologies for determining things like core values and vision. You know, five year, ten, year three, one quarterly. That kind of. That whole shebang, which I'm sure your listeners are familiar with.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Um, and that's when Bill pulled me aside later and he goes, okay, I've been looking at you like a wild card jumping out of the plane with no parachute. And I know you see me as a stick in the mud, not willing to do anything new or different, but I think you're the right guy for this job. And I was like, hell yeah, let's go.

Speaker A: That must have been quite a moment.

Speaker C: That was a huge moment. Um, yeah. And so from that point forward, I had his trust and it was like, full on, I'm steering the ship.

Speaker A: Why do you think that this team was open to that? Sometimes you might get people that are sabotaging new efforts like this feel threatened by it.

Speaker C: Yeah, they weren't at first. And this is where Active Index comes into play because I got introduced to psychometrics, um, in like 2015, uh, or 16. And we started seeing from a behavioral scientific lens just why we were so different and had such different approaches. It was a total game changer for me personally with my own self awareness, uh, also in the, you know, 2015-2020 range. I ended up, uh, meeting Brene Brown, if you're familiar with her, and got trained by her. And so I just got into this self awareness flood, uh, which was great because I needed it. I was making plenty of mistakes in leadership, uh, despite the growth and, um, but being able to kind of see that on paper, so to speak, and explain why we were just butting heads, uh, brought a lot of clarity. And we started.

Speaker A: Sorry, you mentioned, you know, Brene Brown, we mentioned eos, uh, Traction by Gino Wickman, who I've had on the podcast before, is the book that inspired all of that. Um, any other tools that you're Using at this time, Culture Index, Bristol Myers Squibs, and any other of those tools that you're using, Colby.

Speaker C: Yeah, there's a couple that we did that were kind of one offs, but we focused a lot on the Strengths finder and Culture Index. Um, I think strengths came first and then Culture Index was more of like, you know, dots on a page. Um, and I just happened to have like their top rep in the entire nation. Uh, was, was my advisor with, uh,

Speaker A: Culture Index StrengthsFinder, if you haven't done is so cool. I did it when I was in the EO accelerator program and I remember the trainer across the room was like, all right, John, here we go. Uh, you are a woo. And I was like, what's a woo? And he explained it and I was like, bingo, that's me. You know, and it was just amazing to hear it.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. So I still give, give, you know, Culture Index, it's sort of a competitor these days. But, uh, I'll give them plenty of shout outs. Like they, um, you know, it changed the game for us. It was awesome.

Speaker A: Well, I do want to ask about that because you have been kind of poking the bear a bit. You know, it looked on your LinkedIn following me. Yeah.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah.

Speaker A: And, uh, on LinkedIn, you posted something quite critical of Culture Index, saying that they're kind of like, uh, comparing them to the BL blockbuster of the industry in a streaming, uh, kind of environment, uh, now. So talk a little bit about that, about that approach of calling out these legacy systems.

Speaker C: Yeah, uh, you can give somebody props and also point out some blind spots at the same time. And I'm early startup mode, which is kind of the bright time to push the envelope a little bit. Um, it's not my forever marketing strategy, but what happened there was, um, they've all gotten wind of me. I've had multiple advisors from them reach out. Their founder came and took our assessment. Um, I don't know if I should have said that, uh, but, um, I started getting their attention and it was right as Aria 2.0. Aria is our AI. Version one was pretty cool. Version 2.0 just changed everything. Uh, I mean, it really pivoted Aptividex, uh, permanently. Um, and customers are talking about it. There's use cases are expanding, and then the hiring piece, which is kind of why it was built in the first place, is now 20, 30% of what we do. Uh, and clients are using AI every day. I mean, like 90% of our clients are using ARIA at least once a week. Most of them Multiple times.

Speaker A: Which is really good.

Speaker C: Crazy.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Yeah. Because usually these assessments, you get a sheet of paper and it collects dust after you kind of make sense of it for the first time. Um, and so there's no compounding strategic value.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: So all that Aria stuff is going on. Uh, we're getting some good press. Uh, EO Network starts talking about us, not just in my chapter in Austin, but we start getting referrals everywhere. I'm like, how did you hear about me? I don't know anybody in D.C. or San Francisco or Boise or whatever. Right. And so, um, at that same time, Culture Index sent a. A, uh, blast email to all of their current and past clients with their new quote, unquote, AI policy, which was don't you dare use it. Don't plug any of our information into a Chat dbt, Gemini or other. Uh, you are not authorized pursuant to the contract you signed, blah, blah, blah. I mean, they threatened their clients. Not just. Not just like, gave a warning of be careful with AI. You know, it can hallucinate. Like, they threatened them. And I thought that was just marketing gold. Like, I'm gonna, uh. I printed that and framed it.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: I was like, all right, let's go LinkedIn.

Speaker A: Right. Which is funny because it's not their clients that are probably doing it. Maybe they are, but it's their non clients. So it's like they're chastising their clients. But I mean, I just wanted to chatgpt right now, and I just typed in what is Culture Index? I could do the same for all those other tools. And it's got pros, limitations, explains exactly what it was. I'm sure if I asked how to apply it to my situation, it would. So, you know, the cat's a little bit out of the bag. And that's a bigger problem than, you know, is beyond the scope of this interview. Right, right. That's something that anyone who's got particular IP needs to figure out. You know, figure out how they pivot their tool into something that, that adds additional value beyond what is in, you know, ChatGPT and Gemini and Perplexity.

Speaker C: Yeah. And it's, you know, it's 2026 now. Right. And, um, just a couple of years ago, as I'm starting up Active Index, which was never. I mean, the science led me to where I am. It was actually an emotional intelligence assessment at first. Um, but then, you know, led me to where I am. But, um, the entire assessment industry, it is like Culture Index, they're all stale, they're using Decades old science. Uh, terminology, uh, algorithm methodology on the statistical analytic. The validation strategies are decades old. Um, none m of them are even thinking about AI. Uh, predictive index. Got real excited and released their AI. It's a meeting note taker that helps you with interviews. That's not AI. There's a million of those already out there. Um, ARIA is taking the behavioral data and turning it into daily strategy.

Speaker A: Well, these companies is classic, um, uh, innovators dilemma. Uh, that they were the innovators. Now they're being disrupted. They need to disrupt themselves, which is hard to do when you've got a legacy business model, paying customers, that sort of thing. Let me ask you this, um, why. So, uh, you'd built up um, champion to 80 million, which then was acquired. So you have an exit, you have a couple of years of doing leadership advisory it looks like, and then you decide to start this. So what point did you decide that I have to get in the game. AI is revolutionizing things and I want to take on this challenge.

Speaker C: Man. I knew from ah, exit that I wanted to be in the world of psychometrics, uh, and leadership development, um, because it was just a game changer. I either wanted to be talking to leaders about culture or I wanted to be talking about behavioral science and how it can inform hiring and leadership and teams, et cetera. And uh, the only reason there was a delay was, you know, I had to stay on with the buyer for a year. That was contractual. Um, and then, you know, I had a nice severance and I was like, man, I've been burning it at both ends for so long. So I took about six months to just work out every day and you know, travel a little bit and deal, uh, with some heavy life stuff too that was going on with, uh, just personal stuff. And then so finally it was, I started doing the leadership development and it was pretty quickly after that that I was just like, I, I need some better assessment data to understand these leaders and their teams. Um, I don't want to use one of these decades old things. Uh, um, so I tried out a couple of more newer ones that were looking at EQ emotional intelligence. Uh, because I was seeing anecdotally this has a bigger impact on leadership than maybe the hard wiring piece does. Um, and just as a thought experiment, I wanted to see if I could develop my own, um, just, just the EO mindset, right? We're just, we get bored and like, what can I do next? Yeah, um, and started learning more and more about the behavioral science, which I had already Nerded out about. I hired a uh, data scientist, a psych, an IO psychologist and a psychometrician just out of my own money before I even had a business bank account and started. Because that experiment which was in a Google sheet at first, turned into a full on obsession uh, after about 20 days.

Speaker B: 20?

Speaker C: Yeah. I mean it became everything. And uh, you know then because we live in the world of AI, know enough about coding to be dangerous but not enough to build something from scratch. But in the world of AI I can absolutely code and check its work and go really really fast. So it's kind of like, I guess it's kind of vibe coding but it's my own stack. Like it's not, not like a service. I mean I'm just writing code.

Speaker A: You're not using lovable or Replit or any of those tools. Okay, okay. I'm curious, why not?

Speaker C: I uh, wanted full control. I wanted this to be a fully contained app that there's no service I'm paying anybody other than a server.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Um, and it was also the best way to learn.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Um, and so you, so you build this up, um, and then how do you start, what's your go to market plan? How do you release it out to the market and start to uh, get some traction around it?

Speaker C: Uh, I knew a couple eoers uh, and, and hopefully EO is something that your listeners know what that is.

Speaker A: But yeah, entrepreneurs organization, I've, I've mentioned it a bunch of times before. Great organization. Yeah.

Speaker C: CEO network. And uh, so I got some of them on uh, beta testing, you know, just free of charge, try this thing out, break it, tell me if it's accurate, that kind of a thing. Uh, and while they're doing that I'm doing multiple validation studies now. We did six official ones where I'm like I'm paying a third party to an official write up and uh, once that was done I'm building the software in the background, tweaking it, fixing bugs. So it was November 1st of 2024 was I'm ready to go. So I launch, I get some of those beta clients.

Speaker A: Let me think November or December of 2022 I think is when ChatGPT launches. And so this is actually only two years after uh, ChatGPT takes the world by storm. So it's not that much later.

Speaker C: My, my, my first code commit in GitHub was late February 2024. That's how fast I was able to build an enterprise grade API powered uh, web portal from scratch. It works on Phones. It works. I mean it's, you know, got a native experience, um, tons and tons of features. And of course a lot of those features came later. It didn't, it wasn't just 10 months. But um. Yeah, I mean now it's just.

Speaker A: Let me ask you a couple questions. Let me ask you a couple questions that I'm curious about. Do you worry that. So, uh. Help, help me understand. Does it, does it take information from all these different assessments and put it into your portal?

Speaker C: No, it's. We have our own assessment and so everything is our own proprietary assessment.

Speaker A: Ah.

Speaker C: We have eight attributes that we're measuring. Um, they do differ quite a bit actually from like a culture index, predictive index, um, just because that's where the science led us.

Speaker A: And then you don't have to worry about getting sued or licensing the different formulas that they use. Okay.

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean I don't have access to that anyway. But I don't like a lot of the things that they use. They don't stand the test of time. I mean, uh, cimpi, for example, both have what they call the C trait, which they call patients and they've wrapped in multiple distinct attributes into one trait and it doesn't work. So in their view, if you want somebody who is kind of like routine based, systematic approach, who's also like internal urgency is high, you can't. To them, that's a contradiction. But which is. All of the scientific data showed us it's completely distinct. Um, you can be super hyper regimented and predictable and love routine and also be going at 100 miles an hour all the time. Um, and so we've, and there's some other things about traits that they, I mean PI doesn't. They only have four. Um, CI, I think has seven. Um, the one that they have that has to do with emotional state is just off. Um, it's. They use disempowering language. It's, it's just, it's unkind and it's not even, I don't think accurate. Um, it is sometimes. Right. Every. All of these assessments are going to be pretty dang good 60, 70% of the time.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: So maybe a little generous, but m, like when it's wrong, when it's off, it just, it's. It's like destructive.

Speaker A: Yeah. Damaging. You can promote, promote the wrong person or keep the, the wrong person in the wrong role, that sort of thing. Um, let me ask a couple other questions. So a, uh, similar question to what we were talking about earlier with culture index. So, um, you know, why maybe devil's advocate here, why wouldn't someone just go to ChatGPT and use that for their hiring? Why? You know, how did you build the product deliberately in order to make it something that people are willing to pay for separately?

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, go for it. Like I actually uh, I haven't released it yet because I just, you know, entrepreneur and a million other things. But I built a framework uh, of uh, four primary attributes that I plan to just give away for free. Like hey, take this PDF, upload it to ChatGPT and use these questions to ask in an interview setting to see if you can get a gauge for it. It's not scientific, but you can still probably get a sense. And if you know what your targets are here, then you can make some pre informed decisions. Um, so you can do that. The problem is every single time you do that you're uploading or creating a custom GPT or you're guessing you're not really using a validated method to do it. Um, and it's, you know, using a platform that's not built for that. So Chat GPT will hallucinate, it will give you bad information. Yeah, um, the culture index. Clients who've tried using their, their CI results with ChatGPT, like they don't like them, they're like oh man, this is way off, you know, that kind of thing. Because you really have to, if you're going to train an AI, you have to understand what's going on in the background like how it searches the context and uh, how to create that hierarchical knowledge base and everything else. That's just not something that people are going to bother doing. And if they are, what's it worth to them?

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: If you're a 50 person company and you're hiring even just three people this year and you avoid one Mishire, you've paid for our software for like five years. It's like a no brainer. Like so why would you go do all of that effort? Um, plus most CEOs in our world love innovative solutions. Um, so yeah, to answer your question, go ahead, go for it.

Speaker A: Yeah, and I'm curious also, you know, we're rapidly moving towards this world where people are discovering companies like yours through ChatGPT, Gemini perplexity versus from Google or other forms. It doesn't mean that they won't use Google anymore, it just means that they're going to be discovering from those. How do you approach that? You know, do. Because we were talking earlier about there's fears of putting your information into these AIs. Do you fear that or do you m. Embrace that as a, as a new company embracing the new world that we live in?

Speaker C: Yeah, it's the latter for sure. In fact, you said you had that chatgpt pulled up. Uh, you ought to just ask it. How does this compare to Aptive Index? Uh, and see what it says. You'll see it's going to be pretty dang favorable towards us because I am just of the opinion put it all out there. Um, worst case, somebody just steals some of the IP and makes one of their own. Like, okay, yeah, healthy competition. I'm all for it. Um, you know, we put our pricing on our website, which our competitors hate.

Speaker A: Yeah, you got to book a call.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's just, it's just the world we live in. Like, information is power and if I put that information out there, it's going to gain me credibility with people looking at my website. Uh, which is about to get a little bit of an overhaul as well. Um, but it also helps ChatGPT and Gemini and all these others. Claude. Yeah, like they know Active Index now.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And you know, I don't know if

Speaker A: you just did it or not, but yeah, I did. It's coming up with it with it here. So a, uh, culture Index is a self report workplace inventory intended to measure work relevant traits. Active Index is a workplace behavior behavioral assessment positioned as a selection tool for hiring and development. So yeah, it has a full explanation here of kind of background. Um, but yeah, I think that the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, or whatever metaphor you want to use. It is a new world that we live in and it's like, you know, there are many companies that are putting their head under the, under the, in the sand. Like just like they did in the 90s, you know, and they didn't realize that the Internet was here to stay and it's going to really evolve and change businesses dramatically. Like Yellow Pages comes to mind. You know, things like that.

Speaker C: That. Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, I also want to ask you about venture capital funding. So you mentioned earlier, one of your big regrets with your previous company was that you didn't raise VC funding. But yet you said you're bootstrapping this, you're self funding it. So talk a little bit about that decision.

Speaker C: Well, I m thought I'll just bootstrap it until I need more. And the way it kind of happened is the universe just started dropping people in my lap. Um, people in my network started signing up as customers. And um, this guy Joe Uh, in Boise. He's, he's an eoer. He was, you know, Austin for a while and then he. Now he's, you know, Boise. After he moved, he became a client. He had been a culture index client for 10 years actually. Um, I can, I converted him over and the day after training he calls me and he goes, Jason, this is, this is even better than what you sold me on. Like I, I need to sell this for you. I'm m like, okay. And so he's signing up, up 8, 10 new clients a month now.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker C: Uh, and I have other people just kind of like that. Right. So, uh, now EOers are going, ooh, this is a pretty lucrative side hustle. You know, I've been, I've been recommending PI or CI for years and haven't gotten a penny for it. Yeah, let me go get.

Speaker A: So you built like a referral commission program to incentivize people to sell it

Speaker C: to others, uh, for full on advisors. Yeah, I mean like, you know, Joe is, he's been running his company for 20 plus years. He's trying to sell that off or retire or whatever. So this is his retirement plan. Um, and he can make real good money doing it too. Um, because I'll pay somebody a big old chunk of the farm reoccurring if I don't have to pay him salary.

Speaker A: Yeah. And even that is an innovative, different approach that is disruptive to what the legacy your competitors have been doing is just that way of selling. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, well, I think this has been fascinating learning about, uh, Active Index. Um, before we get done, I want to hear about. You mentioned a client, a customer of yours that said, uh, that Aria, which is your AI within AppIndex, basically saved his marriage. I want to hear this story. Yeah.

Speaker C: Uh, dude, Aria is being used for so many different use cases. Um, D1 sports clubs have picked us up now and you're using it with

Speaker A: their players for motivating players or selecting the players or.

Speaker C: Yeah. Understand like Aria is like, is like running over 90 accuracy predicting what football position players play just based on the behavioral data.

Speaker A: Yeah, based on their personality, based on the way they behaved in the past. Like they should, this person should be a tight end versus they should be a quarterback versus they should be a quarterback, bro.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's like this guy, uh, like one of them was uh, predicted outside linebacker, uh, and specifically called out not middle linebacker because you know, this guy is somebody who studies film. He's got great technique, but he needs somebody else to really do the directing traffic.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker C: And this. This guy, you should have seen his face. We were on the zoom, and he was just like, are you kidding me?

Speaker A: Like, it was like his reaction was that, that is good.

Speaker C: Or like, I didn't expect 100 accurate.

Speaker A: So he hadn't been playing this position. So he's thinking like, no, he was.

Speaker C: So this is a guy who's in his 50s.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker C: And we just kind of did an experiment.

Speaker A: Oh, so this is like a coach.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Okay. So he was surprised that one of the players who'd been playing a different position that. That Aria is suggesting to put them into outside linebacker.

Speaker C: So, no, I'm not explaining. Right. So. So I'm on with the coach.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker C: And all I have is his behavioral data. And I just. Out of. Just for fun, I said, aria, predict what position this guy played in football.

Speaker A: Oh, what he played in football. You didn't know what position he'd played? Okay.

Speaker C: I had no idea.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker C: And it got it so accurate that it was just eerie. Um, but, yeah, back to the story I told you before we hit record. Yeah, man. There's a client who, um. Things that had been on the fritz, uh, between him and his wife, and they, uh, have a daughter as well, who's in her teens, and just kind of everybody, whole family at each other's throats. And they just decided one night to sit down. They had all done active index, and they're like, let's see if Aria has anything to say about this. And they start typing in just, like, for like, three hours in their living room, like, projecting Aria up onto their TV screen, just chatting away about, like, uh, getting this, like, objective readout to understand why they had been butting heads the way they had. And, yeah, he swears today, he's like, this saved my marriage.

Speaker A: Wow. Wow, that's incredible. And then, you know, people are using it in the EOS context to find the right integrator, find co founders, find business partners, of course, hiring, firing, you know, what role, what seat on the bus people should sit in. Um, any other applications or any other case studies you want to share?

Speaker C: Yeah, all of that. Building, um, out a team, resolving, uh, conflict at work, uh, meeting tips. I mean, just a quick, like, hey, who should even run this meeting between these people? Um, like, who's actually going to be the one who gets all the ideas out of, uh, folks, you know, who's the guy who should have just sent an email instead of showing up to me?

Speaker A: All that.

Speaker C: All that kind of stuff.

Speaker A: Yeah. Super interesting, Jason. Thank you. So much for being here today, for sharing the story. I'd be super interested to follow your journey with Active Index and see where it goes. Um, so where can people go to connect with you, learn with you, learn about you and learn more about Aria and learn more about Aptividex?

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, it's a made up word, so a P T I v e aptiveindex.com uh, that'll get you a pretty good baseline of information. Um, you can try the assessment yourself. At least right now we might be changing that soon, so go do it soon. Um, but Jason P. Carroll, uh, on LinkedIn, find me there, Connect with me there. I try to be pretty good about replying to DMS and all that. Um, and eventually I'll strike up my podcast again and you can help me with that.

Speaker A: Excellent. All right, thanks so much, Jason.

Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution podcast. We'll see you again next time. And be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.