We let you be machineass assisted. Not replaced by, enhanced by. This wasn't just your average grandfather. Take time to soak up the knowledge that he has. This is the upside. More time for what matters and what you love and what brings you joy.
What are a few of your favorite excerpts from the book that everyone in the world should know. From South Bin to Evansville and everywhere in between, this is Get In, the show focused on the Hoosier State and the incredible stories happening here today. I'm Nate Spangle, founder of Get Indiana, and I will be your host for today's conversation. Did you know that Indiana has been a hub for sports innovation for over a century, starting with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where pioneers tested gamechanging tech like seat belts and anti-lack brakes? That forward-thinking spirit is still in overdrive today, and Sports Tech HQ is at the center of it. They're on a mission to scout the most groundbreaking sports tech that is shaping the future of sports, and to bring those innovators right here to Indiana.
Guess what? It's working. Sports HQ already has 38 companies in its collective that call Indiana home. With 16 relocating from around the world in just the past year, home to a worldclass sports infrastructure, Indiana provides the perfect foundation for entrepreneurs to advance innovations that can change the game for fans, athletes, and teams, Sports Tech HQ is the leading global hub for an industry that is projected to reach 100 billion by 2030. Discover how these companies are driving the future of sports through Indiana's robust ecosystem of partners at stthq. org.
Today I'm joined by the powerhouse Karen Manga, current president and chief strategy officer at the Engineered Innovation Group. With over 20 years of experience working with major companies like Salesforce, Cisco, and AT&T, she's helped businesses grow by putting customer success at the heart of everything. When she's not inspiring innovation across your commerce, she's writing best-selling books, hosting her Success from Anywhere podcast, and supporting the arts as a board member for the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. She is also the author of Sundays with Salvador, 52 recipes to cultivate conversation, connection, and community. Uh it's a book written about her 101year-old grandfather, Salvador. And I'm really excited to dive into that.
If you follow her on LinkedIn, you've definitely seen some of the the wisdom uh that Salvatore puts out there. So today, we're going to be talking about separating the help from the hype when it comes to AI. And we're gonna do a deep dive into that book, Sundays with Salvador, and talk about some of the wisdom that uh that Grandfather Salvatore has to share with his 101 years of experience. H and we're going to wrap out. We might tease something new that Karen has dropping here in the in the near future. So, uh Karen, welcome to Get In.
Thanks so much. It's great to be here. Yeah, great to be back. Right. This is uh I don't know that might have been like early 20s or 30s episode that I think you and Jake came on and I don't know talked through this was like maybe 2 years ago year and a half ago. So it's fun to have you back and talk about all the new things that are going on with EIG and and obviously the book.
Yes. And when I think about it now the delta between where that conversation was and the company was to now it feels like a Dr. Seuss book. Oh the places you'll go. Wasn't that one of his books? I I do believe so.
Right. Yeah. Because at the time, for anyone that goes back or or has listened to that episode before, uh, EIG started as a really big like services-based uh, like outsourced dev, you know, that type of work, right? Yes. Our original hypothesis that our founder and CEO Jake Miller used to start the company was let's help startups start up. What he observed as a brilliant technical visionary is how much time and money startup founders spent trying to bring their first version of a software product to market.
And what he realized is there was a market where you didn't need to hire as a startup full-time product people to build that first version of your product, that minimum viable product. Instead, you could outsource that to a company like ours. And ideally, we would grow together. As you grow, we have more services to offer you. or if you decided to hire your own staff, we would do a turnkey solution for you and off you would go with great documentation and security in the first version of your product. We realized that we had services and expertise that were beneficial up market.
And so we expanded to some other services and additional people. And what was interesting is when we got to the beginning of 2024, people started saying things to us like, "I'm not sure more software is the solution to my problem." If software were going to solve my business problems, it would have done it by now. The way that we internalized that message as 2024 played out was there are so many organizations that are software rich and ROI poor. Okay. So, so software rich spending a lot, have a lot of options, have a lot of tools.
Yes. But what was the final piece? ROI poor. Oh, okay. Yeah. You know, you're not getting the information you need about your business in a timely way to run and make decisions for your business.
Well, there's nothing worse than like, you know, in the demo or in the marketing materials, you see this like fancy solution, you're like, "Yes." Like, you're so bought in like this is what's going to help my business. And then it's like you get it and it's like you have to set it all up and you have no idea what you're doing and it doesn't work the way you thought it was going to work and it and all your data doesn't port in the same way that it was supposed to and yada yada yada. And think about how many times you've heard this phrase that's always the hook in those demos. It's going to be your single source of truth. I can't tell you how many single sources of truth I've personally lived through in my years leading sales and customer experience only to find out that oh yeah, not quite all the information is there.
You still have to log into 25 different systems. There's no such thing in software as a single source of truth. Bum bum bum. Right? And what that means is stranded value. Right?
If I don't have everything I need to know about my customer in one place or the entire executive dashboard is driven by a team of people who are clicking into 15 different systems and then producing this magical beautiful dashboard or set of PowerPoint slides. That's manual effort. That's stranded value. There was a recent study that revealed that the average employee spends 57% of their workday on work about work. 57% of the workday. 57%.
Okay, if you had just to describe or define what's work about work, think about giving the presentation to the boss. We need to give you the state of the business. This could be the sales forecast, the pipeline velocity, the customer experience scores, whatever the metrics are for the health of your business. That 57% is a human being or set of human beings clicking on one tab and logging into a system and pulling one piece of data over here then clicking on another system or software or let's be honest spreadsheet. Ah yeah spreadsheet pulling a piece of information there and then manually manipulating all this. So 57% of your time is just spent task squishing to go gather little bits of information that are everywhere so that you can produce this value added piece of work.
57% of time is Yeah. explaining either the work that has been done or the work that needs to be done. Yes. And like pulling out all these things. That's wild. Yes.
And we even noticed it in a business our size. At our peak, we hit 43 employees and the CEO and I could not go to every meeting and keep up on every project. We didn't even have enough information to make decisions about the business at our size. So now play that out to an enterprise. That became the inspiration for Jake to write a little AI solution for us that integrated with Slack. We happen to be a Slack organization.
You might be teams that works with that as well. The idea was, how could we build something that would fetch all of this information from places like Jura tickets and Slack notes that the team was writing to each other and emails and call recordings and turn that into something so that in a single Slack channel, Jake and I at any moment could go in and say, "Please give me the update on the Getin client and how we're doing." And it would tell us. Then you could ask more questions. We thought, "This is great." Then we would say, "Now, let's have it write an executive summary that we could send every week to every client."
Boy, that went really quickly. We used this original idea to help ourselves scale and be more productive. And when people started saying to us, I don't think I need more software. I've got all this stranded value. I don't need any more software. I'm up to my eyeballs in software and software spend.
Right? And so many of those features actually go unadopted and unused. We thought, we're on to something here. And so we took this internal solution that we called Roxy AI named after our founders dearly departed enormous St. Bernard dog started testing this with larger organizations and saying you know have you ever noticed you have all this software and all this information and yet you never quite have what you need. Have you ever noticed that you don't want your most expensive employees spending time doing really manual tasks?
you want them to do the thinking tasks that lead to value for you and for your organization. And they said yes. And so we packaged up Roxy AI as a platform and started selling pilots to people. And what we discovered was, and I'll give you a real example, a health insurance company that provides insurance to businesses with 100 employees and fewer. Like many insurance organizations, they have a backlog of claims that have been submitted. Now, in their case, 20,000 cases were backlogged.
Holy new ca new cases are coming in every single day. They could not hire enough people fast enough to unclog the backlog, much less keep up. Their hypothesis was, what if Roxy AI could do the work of six full-time equivalent claims processors in their call center? And as of today, just in that limited pilot, Roxy's doing the work of 10 full-time equivalents with insurance claims. Like there would have to be, you know, like a testing portion of lots of like checks and balances, right? You want to make sure that the right things come through.
Holy fulltime employees. So picture what was happening. There was no reason why any particular claims agent was working any particular claim. Part of what we did with this Roxy AI solution and this is the difference between the hype of oh AI is taking everyone's jobs versus the help that says I could help you do your job better and you might feel more satisfied at the end of the day if you solved a thousand claims and still only worked eight hours. Right? Think how happy the people are when you call them and say we've fixed your issue.
We've resolved your problem. What we did was we took that big case backlog. We categorized all of them by urgency. We pulled from other sources of information and said, "Hey, this is waiting on a piece of data that sits somewhere else." And instead of having a human go look for it, let's have Roxy fetch that and bring it back just like any good dog would, right? And then the claims are prioritized in the queue and then they are assigned based on agent skill level.
So, imagine you're great at getting people preapproved for surgery and I'm great at getting people approved for physical therapy after they've had some kind of injury. Well, now you and I are going to get routed what we're good at because you can get in a flow state. You can start moving it along faster. It doesn't mean we took your job. It means we made your job easier. We let you be machineass assisted.
Not replaced by, enhanced by. Wow. Okay. So, it wasn't like, okay, the Roxy was like processing claims and deciding like approved, denied, or whatever, you know? It was like, okay, we're going to route this. What other task is?
Let's say you have like a long to-do list. You organize your own to-do list by like, okay, I can get some early momentum here around lunchtime. I might get tired, so I'm going to like do some sit down type work and yada yada yada. And you just have this, you know, whether it's schedule and and logged and yeah, you just like set yourself up for success. So, that's really interesting. How do you equate like oh the work of 10 FTEEs like how what's the metric used to calculate that?
It's the velocity at which they are closing cases. So the volume that they can process and the speed at which they can do that and then being able to maintain a reasonable case load without adding more full-time equivalent people. Wow. Okay. That's really cool. What was the feedback that you got from them?
They're so thrilled. They've done a whole platform subscription and in fact the next step we're taking with them is we are going to start unhooking some of the software and systems they have because like many organizations they grew a little at a time and every time they grew or found a great third party solution they kind of added it into their tax stack and over time it's just a giant tangled spaghetti ball. Maybe Tinker Toys is a better example. It's all interconnected and they're saying maybe we could start retiring some of these. Maybe Roxy could just do the work of some of these software and systems and we don't need that to be the source record any longer. And so that's the next journey that we're on with them to see how far we can go.
Wow, that's super exciting. Okay, so as you've been piloting out Roxy, I love when problem or when solutions come from solving your own problems, right? It's like, "Oh, we built this for us." And then it's almost like people start to be like, "Well, we could use that, too." And you Yeah. You you solve your own problem and it ends up solving the problems of of many.
Yes. And another organization we're working with is in steel manufacturing and advanced logistics. Now, when I say those words to you, you're not picturing this is the most modern technical stack that you've ever heard of or seen. Yeah. I'm thinking of like a foundry, right? Like you think of what what was the second logistics and steel manufacturing.
Steel manufacturing. So making those giant spools of Yeah. Right. And when you think about that, this is the kind of organization that has a lot of technical debt. This is the kind of organization when you say technical debt, right? So we not every one of the listeners are going to be, you know, tech startup employees.
So when you say technical debt, what do you mean by that? When you show up at work and you log into the software that you need to do your job and you think to yourself, "Why can't this thing work or look like my iPhone or Amazon?" That's technical debt. What it means is the stuff you have is so old they can't make it new matter how much you wish they could. There you go. Technical debt.
Well, that's where it's like the oldest pieces, right, of how I thought of you said like a spaghetti ball or Tinker Toys. I think of like I don't even know like like mouse trap almost where it's just like all or like duct tape this and like popsicle sticks this and it's just this giant tower of of you know different ages you know like what's the song by um by Johnny Cash where he's like I got it one piece at a time and he like over the course of 50 years like you know gets his brand new car but it has one turn signal on the left and two on the right like that's what I think about that and technical debt would be all those old pieces right pieces of that as you guys have been taking this out to like what are the like the problems that you can go out there and solve that like get you really excited? I get very excited about what we are doing in the healthc care space because that's connected to helping people lead better lives.
I mean, let's face it, if you're one of the people I was talking about before who's sitting in that claims queue waiting for resolution, by default, it means something's not going well for you from a health perspective most likely. What's more stressful than being sick and calling a call center and dealing with your insurance? Yeah. And I always say too, it's like you're you're on the phone there and it's like that claims agent, it might be their 12th call of the day, but that's 12 people who this is the most important thing for them, you know, like 12 people and and it's like people aren't always the nicest and they're urgent because, you know, this is a big issue in their life and for you it's just call number 12, right? If you're the one on the phone and so helping them. Yeah, actually help improve that, you know, customer experience, the patient experience there.
In that job, when you're in the call center, you really do want to help the person that's calling. And usually there's a process or a data or a regulatory issue that gets in your way. It's it's not because you lack the skills or the desire, it's just challenging. Another one of my favorite use cases is one of our clients who is focused on improving the quality of leadership and leadership impact in major moments in an employees journey using our solution. Here's their concept. Leaders very rarely get training about things that matter.
You know, navigating a difficult feedback or performance conversation, resolving conflict between employees, managing office politics, whatever that looks like. There are myriad of scenarios where maybe you went to a class. What kind of practice do you really get when the moment happens? What they decided to do is build a solution that integrates with Slack and Teams and Zoom in many places. And in the moment, we're leveraging our solution, Roxy, to help detect when a scenario is escalating. And it will then proactively pop up privately to the manager.
It seems like the situation is escalating between two of your employees. Would you like to take a quick 15inute training about how to resolve workplace conflict or would you rather schedule time with a coach and talk this scenario through and right there you can take action. Whoa, that's kind of crazy, isn't it? So yeah, right there you're like all like an E then then it like puts you to the right because everyone goes through it's probably like your first week at a new job. It's like hours and hours and hours of those videos and it's like it all runs together. Let's be honest, right?
So then it like takes you back into like a snippet of one of those I'm assuming where it's like okay here's this 15inute thing about how to deescalate you know when you're direct reports are getting chippy with each other. Yes. And we actually have another client. It's a great example. It's in the insurance space and we're helping them with more effectively onboarding employees by making it easier to connect with the content they need after that first day plus the checklists and the reminders. I mean that's a world where you need certifications and tests and also for leaders in this organization they might have a hundred new people that are starting tied to their branch in any given week.
How do you keep up with the onboarding success of a 100 people? We've automated all that for them and proactively built ways that leaders can see, hey, somebody's really off pace. Nate's really off pace. I should actually contact him and have a live conversation. He's so far behind. And then hey maybe half of them are progressing right on track.
And the idea is to remove barriers to success very early on of both the learning the content also creating an internal network of people much more effectively than asking your manager do you know someone I could meet right I mean in most organizations especially bigger ones people figure out how to get things done by building internal networks. The sooner you can build that the more successful you be you'll be. So, we're helping with that. Oh, I actually I'm reading a book. I just talked about it uh on the podcast yesterday. It is um unreasonable hospitality.
Um have you heard of this? I have. The 11 m 11 Madison Park. Well, so he he goes to a part about hiring and it was like a part of like building community in there and like getting people connected, especially if you're falling behind. Like in a world with remote work and people are here and there and it's like it can be tough to like maybe you get stuck on one little thing and you're so hooked up on it that it ends up pushing you behind and then you're like okay maybe this job just isn't for me. But he talks about how he would weigh and hire in groups and get them connected so that one they got to like kind of bring their own energy and culture into the organization and two it's like he was in the middle of like a regime change as he took over 11 Madison Park and he didn't want them getting influenced by the old guard baby and he wanted the the fresh perspective.
So it was really interesting uh as you think about building those networks inside whether your company is a restaurant in New York City of 100 people or it's a you know massive tech company here in Indianapolis. I think that's super super fascinating. I did want to talk a little bit about um we're talking through AI right and specifically like what's hype what's help when I think about EIG's business model. We're just over three years old three years and three months. Oh my gosh. Okay.
So just over three years old. three years ago helping startups start up. Yes. And you talk about like building MVPs. Now in 36 months there are platforms AI thing that can build you MVPs. Like people are just like the work that you were doing three years ago.
I'm not saying it's completely replaced. There are still tons of good you know you sometimes you need to go out and have um actual like software development built but there are people building MVPs using only AI. when you see that is it like crazy of how quick this is moving what are your thoughts on that? Yes. And what we discovered in the business and I think every organization of every size goes through this. You first have to define or hypothesize your ideal customer profile.
Every business knows for the most part or tries to figure out who's your ideal client because they're most likely to spend money with you, be loyal, repeat business with you. And for us, we did a pretty good job of defining our ideal customer profile. you know, who would be willing to pay us for the services we could offer. Where we struggled was product market fit because to your point, as more AI and automation solutions can assist these especially non-technical startup founders, the issue is that part of the business erodess and you have to go up market. Well, when we go up market as a services business, we're competing with some very large well-known brands. It's difficult to differentiate from a services organization that's already embedded doing software work at a bigger company because they look at someone like us and it they're like how different could you possibly be?
Yeah. And no one ever lost their job doing what's already been done. Right. Right. It's like oh let's say they take a risk on the innovative, you know, awesome Indianapolis, you know, startup but growing scaling company. Right.
And you guys totally like not that you guys would ever do this, but like no one loses their job when they just keep the status quo. They're not willing to take the risk when you're at this big, you're comfortable. You know, you got your house, your pool, you're chilling like ah, you know what? I don't need that risk. Like this vendor that you have is inevitably already in your procurement system. You've negotiated this volume rate and you kind of know what you're going to get.
It takes a lot to differentiate to the degree to your point that someone's willing to take that risk. What we have found with our AI solution, Roxy, is people are more attuned to, hey, there's a lot of great companies solving really niche areas, but they're small. And we're used to at the beginning of a new technology cycle or a new product cycle. People want to try the something new and different because they see the potential benefit. And what especially in the tech space we're tuned to is usually at the beginning of that, there are always companies you've never heard of. Yes.
was some name with like slight like punctuation or you know like like some just some cheeky name. Exactly. So we're more receptive to the thought of oh for a completely new something that's coming to market. There is no known brand yet. It's all very fragmented. There really is no market leader at this point.
That made it easier for us to find our product market fit. And for us, it's also been in every conversation, we anchor to what is the business problem you're trying to solve or the opportunity you're trying to create because those connect to real metrics. We can measure what we're going to do together, which means this isn't just a fun thing that we're going to try to say that we're doing AI, quote unquote. We're we're doing this because we can tie it to a measurable business impact. And I think that's the difference for us at this stage. One thing I see with AI too is like headcount.
It's interesting uh of I think usually people thought like oh you grow a company and obviously you increase revenue but when you increase revenue you increase headcount right? It's like oh yeah I started we grew it to 5,000 employees or whatever and you're like wow you've made it. But now as you see like tech startups and AI like headcount might not be the like northstar metric. It's almost like efficiency, right? Where it's like, oh, we could get to X amount in revenue with X amount of employee, you know, a lower employee count, but also X amount of employee satisfaction because it's like you don't want to like overwork your employees there. But if you can use these tech solutions to uh it technically assist, what was the I think you had a word earlier or like a phrase you used earlier.
It's tech empowered. Tech empowered. Yeah. Uh I think that's super super interesting. I mean, what do you see from from that perspective of these tech startups that are that are growing? Similar to you guys, right?
Like a services company, you have to grow headcount super high if you want to do $100 million in revenue, right? Like you have to have a lot of staff if you're a strictly services company. But as a product company, you can do it. I mean, I don't know. There might be did we have we had it yet like a single person AI like unicorn? I feel like that's got to be coming down the pipeline.
I feel like toe and I just talked about that that it's like how long until someone can build a billion dollar company with just AI and one person. Yes. And we think about this in our organization because Roxy AI is it's called a multi-agentic solution. Think of it this way. Imagine if your org chart of human beings had a correlary org chart that was digital human beings. Okay?
So imagine I could show up at work tomorrow and I could hire on my team without spending any money Fran the finance expert and Roger the retail expert because they're an industry vertical, you know, expert in that topic and they can help me figure out my e-commerce solution and you could add these digital humans to your team without adding cost. It's amazing what that could look like because now you can do exactly what you said. Augment your organization with digital humans that have valuable capabilities that have frankly endless capacity. They never burn out. They always love to work there. You never hurt their feelings.
You don't have to write a performance review. They never ask for a raise. It's amazing what is possible. This is like it almost it's awesome. Like super cool. Especially as like I'm hiring my first employee, you know, and I'm trying to like we're lean and mean and like thinking of ways and in the creative space.
It's interesting because I don't want to like jeopardize. People can tell when you write something with AI or it's like a my favorite was like there was a really hot moment where like LinkedIn posts and all of a sudden like 75year-old white guy is starting to use like all sorts of emojis and I'm like Dennis come on dude we know that you didn't write that. like we know that you just put this in it's got it spit out by an AI thing. So I try to like balance and and I don't like post anything out that's like directly AI but like for ideiation and content creation like it can really help get the the wheels turning. So how are you seeing these lean teams whether it's you know solution let's actually I would say outside of a solution like what you guys are are implementing just like the general AI tools how do you see founders leaders business operators leveraging AI to improve their workflow like today what could we go do one easy one reclaim.
ai reclaim. ai AI manages your calendar for you, including it. You can program it to put in rest breaks, lunch breaks. You can say, "I want my one-on- ones with my employees or all my customer meetings clustered together." And it will dynamically manage your calendar. So, you kind of get an assistant, but it plugs in and you program it with your preferences.
You know, if if you could program it to say, "After I have three hours of meetings, please program a 15 minute break." And it will just dynamically do that for you. And as your calendar changes, it will change with you. That is very useful, especially if you can't afford an assistant. To your point of being lean and mean, I'm like looking at this thing right now. This is insane.
Yes. I mean, that is just simple and easy and endlessly useful. I also think about my creative types that I have as clients and on the team and to some degree myself as well. This is the best just going to chat GPT is the best co-creation brainstorming ideiation partner you have that can help you come up with more ideas and move your thought process along before you go have the conversation with the client, the investor, the publisher if you're a bookw writer, whatever that might be. It's amazing how far you can get with just the free version of that and revising or refining an idea and getting more creative. I mean, that's free, easy, and accessible.
And I think more people are becoming attuned to that thought. I should be able to ask a question and then ask a follow-up question and not end up with 65 little tabs open on my desktop or my laptop because I've been trying to get the answer to something or come up with an idea. Now I have to click on 500 links to go find it. And I think that that is just like a great a great example where it's like, okay, we're looking for questions to ask uh an AI expert that's coming in on my podcast and then it like gives you five terrible questions, but then like, oh, there's little snippets within them and it's like, oh, dial more in on this help versus hype uh within the AI sector. And then it gives you like five decent questions and then you got dive like one layer deeper in there and instead of like going all these tabs deeper or having to just like rack your brain for an hour, you kind of get to like, oh, these are these are some solid questions we could ask to like get some real and then at the end it's like and optimize the the answer that would provide something that's going to perform well on social media.
And all of a sudden now we have like four questions that are like phenomenal great hooks that are going to pull people in and then they that they really want to hear your answer. Boom. right there to the point you were making earlier, there's always a balance between putting out what is authentic and real versus something that is machine generated. Your LinkedIn example is a great one. I have produced thousands and thousands of LinkedIn posts at this point in my life. I mean with five soon to be six books, that's how that goes.
Being in thought leadership, that's how that goes. Being in business to some degree, that's how that goes. And I will tell you that my most engaged content on any platform, bar none at this point is still the post I do every single Sunday about my grandfather. And you know why? It's real. I I didn't AI generate a 101year-old human.
I did not AI generate the image of what we're eating for lunch or the activity we're doing. And it's heartfelt and real. And people still gravitate toward what is real. Here's a quick hack to downtown Indie for you. There are two parking garages right by Mass App that are doing $6 for 6 hours of parking. It's uh Pedro on Mass.
Uh if you go to the parking garage underneath that, it's $6 for 6 hours and block 20 right next to Rascaler. Literally pay $6 for 6 hours of parking. It's the moon right off. Don't sleep on it. It's not 52 business lessons you can learn from eating dinner at your grandfather's on Sunday, right? where it's like I did this crazy thing and here's what it like I got married this weekend and here's what it taught me about business right it's like what uh I agree though and I think there's like you do a great job of balancing between like totally unprofessional like you don't want to be on that side uh but it's like oh this is real a glimpse into your actual life and and there's usually a lesson to take out of it or just like an interesting piece or something like oh I never thought about that or that's a cool story or you know whatever it might be I think that that in a world full of AI, human cells, right?
Human like gets real emotion and interaction and people want to hang out and talk to humans. And it's interesting when I heard you say that on my big surprise reveal project, there's an artwork component to it. And so I was looking for someone to do artwork for this. I'm not an artist in that sense. And one of the the creative I ultimately selected, I said, "Well, if you just want to do this faster, I mean, you could just use AI." And the person came back to me after reflecting on it and said, "No, I'm going to handdraw every pencil sketch and I'm going to hand color this in because that's that's what I do.
AI is not going to give you that." And and I won't feel good about putting my name on something that as a creative I did not authentically generate myself. And I thought, "Okay, that's a boundary because it's like you could find someone and probably way quicker. They'd be done in Right. That was my thought. I mean, come on.
This isn't, you know, I'm not on the verge of winning a Nobel Prize for this most likely. I mean, I would welcome it. Of course. Yes, of course. Like, turn it down. If the voting community is listening to the Get In podcast, please give her the give her the prize.
Um, but it's like people take pride in that. Like, I take a lot of pride in when I create a clip or I have a p like I don't just like like again a lot of times you like speed up get 10 clips from a single podcast like put it into XYZ tool. And it's like I love like there's an art form of like finding the right piece of it and then like putting the right overlays and and it's like you finish it and it's like wow like from start to finish this is a creation and it's a an expression of something that I'm passionate about or like a and it's like I don't know people like okay dude chill out it's just an Instagram clip or whatever but I like really love it and the idea of putting it together is fun and racks my brain and like it's a puzzle piece to put together and it's like similar to the illustrator this is this is what you want to put your name on. And the other aspect of it is this is the upside of AI is you can take the pieces of your job or you you know or your personal life that you want to sort of outsource and you can leverage these wonderful tools and platforms and solutions so that you can free yourself up for the parts of your personal and professional life that you find deeply satisfying and meaningful.
Right? If you're a person who hates to cook, chat GPT is great and there are many other applications like it, but ChatGpt say, "Write me a oneweek meal plan that is gluten-free and has these macros." It'll spit it out. Then you write, "Now write me a shopping list." Boom. Done.
So if you don't like to plan all that, there you go. Now, if you're like me and you love to cook, I would be so sad. I would I don't want that kind of assistance. It's the same thing. We can leverage technology to take away some activities that we don't enjoy or and aren't our strengths. This is the upside.
More time for what matters and what you love and what brings you joy. The the cookbook industry is pissed about Chad GPT. They're like they're like, "Dude, I'm like someone who's put out like, you know, you have 50, which you you'll never get the like, you know, the whole story behind the whole cookbook, but it's also like done. It's like, okay, I want this macro, like this protein, yada yada." And it's like you just go to the store and then you put it into your Kroger pickup app. Yes.
It's like, okay, boom, boom, boom, boom. And now you just show up, get it, and then you come home. Exactly. Like, wow. There's really no excuse for for why I don't cook at home. He just solved all my problems.
Well, talking about cookbooks, your book, um, Sundays with Salvatore, like just over a yearish old, maybe almost two. It's a year and some change. It came out in September 2023. September 2023. Yep. Okay.
So, like a year and a halfish. I thought it was spectacular. Uh, I think that the ideas of, you know, one, I think your grandpa was 99 at the time, turning 100. Yes. And uh spending the the you said it's a lesson, a recipe, and something else in each in each of the sections. And because it follows this thought process that all this wisdom I've gotten from him, much of it has been over Sunday dinners.
I cook Sunday dinner for my grandfather every single week and we sit and have a conversation. And so there's 52 chapters in the book that stand alone. You could pick it up, read one. You don't have to hook to anything else. It's a story, a piece of his wisdom, a thought prompt to make that wisdom your own, and then a family recipe, and a picture. Give us a bio of your grandfather.
My grandfather is a firstg generation American, World War II veteran, and an entrepreneur who at this point in time still lives in his own home, plants a garden, has three iPads, two laptops, a smartwatch, and day trades stocks. Stop. He day trades stocks. Day trade stocks. How about it? Holy Wait, what?
Wait. Three Two iPads, three Three iPads, two laptops. He's a technical wizard. He's just like Yes. Wow. So when people say oh I'm too old to learn something I look at him as the example of that's not true.
It's only true if you believe that it's true. Yeah. And the self-t talk where and it's always going to be hard at the first like you know if you just gave the average 90year-old an iPad or an iPhone said figure it out it's like it's hard you know but if you have the right teachers and you just stay persistent on it you can figure it out. Yes. And he's current on current events. He still has a great appetite.
He loves a hearty debate and company. He's so vibrant and just a blueprint for what aging and health span can be like, right? You can live very healthy into your later years. And for him, all of that stock trading is really tied to a higher sense of purpose for him, which is this is how he takes care of his family. I put $125 a month in an account every month and he invests it for me and he prints out statements. We have quarterly portfolio reviews every week.
We're talking about the stock market. Shut up. No, he is taking care of his family with this investing. That's part of his purpose. So, is he just been like has he been really just in the d in the dumps a little bit lately with everything going on? Well, at this stage, he does believe in buying stocks that pay a dividend.
So he's clinging to the fact that he's getting dividends as supplemental income. It's fascinating because he is down much less in his portfolio than the overall market average. So he's actually made very smart buys in Salvador. Come on. Okay. So where where was the moment that you realized that that this wasn't just your average grandfather?
you know, like I this wasn't just like your average human being and that you needed to really take time to, you know, soak up the knowledge that he has. Interestingly enough, it was on a podcast kind of like this because someone asked me the question, who is the most inspiring person that you've met? And I started thinking about that because I've been fortunate to meet a lot of inspiring and interesting and motivated and accomplished people. I started reflecting on what I've learned from various people, mentors, teachers, coaches, bosses, friends, I mean, the whole range. And what I started to realize was the person that I've learned the most from in my life, who I find inspiring for his courage to live well at this age and have the smarts and drive to not outlive his money at this age either, is my grandfather. And I thought, "Wow, if this is one of the greatest teachers of my life and I have all this access to him, I bet other people could learn something from him, too."
And while I still have him and can ask him these questions, I need to write these things down. I'm big on living a life of no regrets. I didn't want to have that moment of regret that I let it slip by that I could document these stories and get videos of him telling these stories while he was still here to do it. Okay, let me tell you a story. This is this is fun. I haven't gotten to this one on the podcast before.
Uh back in 2017, my mom got diagnosed with cancer and I bought her a journal and I was like thinking, okay, if if our time is going to be limited, I want all this prophetic wisdom. I was like, she will give me the answers, you know, like this is my favorite recipe and this is like all the things, right? Like all this wisdom that she's accumulated over her 47 years of life. So I gave her the journal and I didn't check in. And so she would write and do some journaling. After she passed away, what I realized was I didn't give any structure to it.
So it was like or like one one journal entry was like we had spaghetti for dinner last night. It was good. And I was like not the prophetic wisdom I was really looking for. She about having regrets. I was like I wish I would have like actually put questions together and like made this like what was I actually looking for? I just expected her to like read my brain to know like if someone handed you a book and said give me the secrets to life like what would you I don't know where I would start and that's a hard thing to do.
I' start with chat GBT probably. Um so then um I was really close. So her mom my grandma I mean still alive for seven years after my mom and I like okay I get a second chance at this some redemption for this uh this you know I wouldn't say it was totally like regrets but it's like ah if I go back I would have done that differently. So, I wrote her 52 prompts so that she could write out, you know, like what was what was the most inspiring person in your life or your favorite recipe or a time when things were hard or your greatest lesson or blah blah blah blah and wrote her 52 prompts and one by one each week she filled them out, wrote them by hand. I like transcribed it and put together a book uh for her. And it's incredible.
Like it was it's still one of my favorite reads. It's just like uh an autobiography of my grandma. It's fantastic and it's like one of those things where there's like she was a farm wife in northern Indiana. So at surface level you're like okay what do I have to learn from a you know a woman who lived her entire life in northern Indiana and was a but so not true. all you do is ask these questions and it was like oh what I learned from traveling across the country on a train in 1941 or what like it was just she had some insane stories amazing lessons and it was like it was game changer like what one I I want to recommend go read Sundays of Salvatore but also I recommend people like go and talk to the wisest oldest people in their life and garner this and write it down for the future moms and grandmas are special people so I'm I'm sorry to to hear that you've lost yours. And what I love is probably inside of some of what your grandmother wrote down were some nuggets about your mom.
She probably wrote a few memories that included your mom. And so you get to have that time capsule for forever. And that's such a beautiful tribute. It's the other reason I encourage people, even if you don't like to cook, to learn how to make your family foods, that one thing you have at the holidays or your birthday, because sometimes those really meaningful tastes of nostalgia that come through food sometimes die off with a generation or with a person if nobody writes them down or learns how to make them. Yeah, that's that's powerful. What are a few of your favorite excerpts from the book that have just that everyone in the world should know?
One principle I learned from my grandfather that is still true to this day that he lives out every single day is make your money work as hard for you as you work for your money. And I think that's so important because even though he has always had a very modest income and he had a finance and insurance business for many years, he was always very good about saving and investing in the stock market starting in 1967 with some money he inherited from his father when his father passed away. And so the whole point of that is yes, we can say and statistically speaking that they say very few women are invested in the stock market because it's considered very intimidating and not having knowledge. Wow, we're missing a moment especially for women when we on average tend to live longer and on average tend to be paid less for the same work. You have got to learn how to make your money work as hard for you as you're working for your money.
Yeah, I think that is spectacular advice. And and the thing you don't see like you don't see a ton of 90% of 28-y old dudes have a Robin Hood. Yeah. Or have like a Coinb or like all these and it's like we don't know what we're doing either. Like I have no clue. And it's like I just like, okay, I'm supposed to do this.
So I go in there and like I read something on Reddit real quick and then I I'm not like a day. It's like I buy it, set it, forget it. Like I don't know whether it's risk tolerance or what it might be, but you're totally right that that that you're missing a huge opportunity there to get your money in the thing that's going to produce uh um I mean I don't know this is not financial advice, right? But it's like there's a reason a ton of people do it and they a lot of people end up being pretty wealthy, right? There's a reason that people still have money to retire with. Yeah.
It's because they start thinking about it well before they're going to be retiring. Yeah. That's always and it's like uh again I think I'm just thinking through my eye conversations with like 27 28 year old and like women on average usually have like large savings accounts that are earning like half a percent or whatever like but it's like oh wow you have all that like do you have it in your XYZ you know in the brokerage account or whatever no not doing that like too scary could lose it what could make more too. Yeah, I that's a real and I wonder there's got to be some there have to be people out there solving that pro not problem but like encouraging that and providing the right guidance to get invested into something that can help you make you know retirement returns over time. Yes. And Whitney Johnson who wrote a book called Disrupt Yourself.
She was a senior executive in the finance world and now she spends a lot of time breaking down financials and making the market less intimidating. And she does have an entire section of what she does that's really targeted toward women. Generally applicable for us to all be better, less afraid money managers. What is the Okay, so make your money work as hard for you as you work for your money. Bang. I love that.
Okay, that's what any other ones. It's not what's on the table, but who's gathered around it that makes a meal delicious. All right, cut it. We're done. That's That's the mic drop moment. It's not what's on the table, but who's gathered around it that makes a meal delicious.
Isn't that so true? Like I think back to some of the best dinners that I've been to. Rarely is it ever I mean the food obviously accents it a little bit, but you can have 10 McDoubles and have a really good group of friends and just be like that was just an awesome moment of fellowship and a great meal. That's wisdom right there. Holy smokes. For sure.
And I think one of my my other favorites, one of the pictures I have in the book is when my grandparents were living in Florida and they got to be the grand marshalss of the Fourth of July parade in their neighborhood. So they're sitting on the back of this convertible. How they got this, I have no idea, but my grandmother's holding this spray of roses. They're sitting on the back, you know, they're waving to the population. Flash forward, I start doing these LinkedIn posts and write the book. And then my grandfather gets the Sagamore the Wabash award from the governor in Indiana.
He's never been so famous and you know he's been on TV now and podcasts and so forth. And so I said to him, "How does it feel at this age to be having your 15 minutes of fame?" And he said, "I can tell you something about that." And it's this 15 minutes of fame is at least 10 minutes too much. That's a good one, man. Because I mean yeah the sagmore the wobbash like all these accolades just a wealth of knowledge and uh and there is a piece of one I just think that generation in general it's like hey it's we we just keep our head down and keep working you know is that the greatest generation is that the you go by right and it's interesting you say that here I've spent all of this time with my grandfather and we wrote a book together and I walked into his house in the fall and he said I have something to tell you that I've never told anyone before in my life.
How is that possible? At this point, we did a whole book where we captured everything you know and have experienced. For the first time ever, he told us that he was in D-Day when he was in the Navy and unpacked the whole story. And I don't know if it was the anniversary of that, you know, in the commemoration that sparked that thought or the desired shelves. I don't know why he waited all this time. And I've taken him on the honor flight where you go with the veterans on the program to Washington DC and they see their monuments and he's with didn't come up that day.
Not when we met Bob and Kitty Dole. Not when we're in front of the mon. Never mentioned it until a few months ago. I mean, how does that not come up? If you were there, I don't know how much I'd want to like talk about anything like and and and what was his feedback where he's like, I've never told anyone about this. Like, did he tell you why he's never told anyone about this?
He did not say why he's never told us. We asked questions and he said he remembers, you know, seeing the soldiers going up onto the shore and they were a supply ship. So, they had taken supplies and they were sitting there because they were anticipating needing to resupply even before it was of course known what a significant uh and massive event that would be. And I asked him, I said, "Did you know how serious the situation was?" And he said, "They don't tell you things like that when you're in the military. You just get told what to do and you do it."
He said, 'The only thing I can tell you that I remember as being very different about that day is that when we were sitting in the water in the boats, we sat anchor up because of needing to retreat probably very quickly. And he said the plan was we were told that when we retreated, we would be going to the south of France because that was anticipated to be the next big battlefront. That did not play out because of how D-Day happened. But I thought, how have you never mentioned this? I can't imagine. I I truly can't imagine.
But to your point of the greatest generation and the humility, it was like well I don't know why that would need to be said. I am like a history buff and and it it's a boy like I don't know how many World War II veterans are left still living. Can't be many at this point, right? You think of 1941 to 45 uh add another 80 years on that. So and you were already had to be right around 18, you know. Yeah.
I mean, so this this generation is coming to a point where those won't be first person recollections anymore. And I just can't imagine like I think there it's like here I am 28 years old hosting a podcast in Indianapolis and I post on social media and that's how I get paychecks from that. And I'm like 60 80 years ago. It's like thinking about sitting out in uh in this the English Channel anchors up ready to like zip out of there. It's just nut. It's just like and then coming back and like not talking about that and just like that's what we did, you know?
U people that were like faking their age to like go and fight in this. It's wild. It gets me like very in a in a state of a ton of gratitude and and I just think like it's stories like that as well as you have 50 52 stories in the the cookbook with your grandpa that there's just so much that we can pick up from. Maybe not the most um extravagant or the most Instagrammable life, but a really good life. And when you get to be 101, you can look and have these incredible stories and have be a person that you know your granddaughter still wants to come over every Sunday and have a meal with you and there's still new things that you can discover at 101 years old. Wow.
Okay. I I love it. See, you never know where the conversation is going to go and it pumps me up. The final thing we want to talk about is you do have a new book that's launching. And the new book is quite the departure from anything I've ever done. It's going to be what?
The secrets to AI, right? That would be the shortest book I've ever written because I'm probably not the expert on that topic. What is the new book? What do we have coming out? Well, the new book is my first ever children's book, and it is inspired by my three and a half-year-old nephew, who is of Chinese and Sicilian descent. And I started thinking about how to celebrate those cultures.
And what would the crossover be? It's noodles. You know how much kids love noodles? Well, the Chinese brought spaghetti to Italy. And so, the book is inspired by my nephew and his ducky and bear that he sleeps with every night. And the book is called Ooodles of Noodles.
And together they go on an adventure around the world trying noodles in different cultures and meeting people. And at the end of the book, discovering that we're all the same people, no matter our home. That's a wrap right there. Come on. I love it. A children's book, uh, Oodles of Noodles.
I mean, I'm sold. I think Where can people pick up the book at? You can get it on Amazon. Oodles of Noodles Around the World. And beautifully, it was hand illustrated. This was the sketch I was talking about earlier.
I mean, pencil sketches, hand inked, and each page is a masterpiece. Truly, what I love about this, too, is it also ties into your book Sundays with Salvatore, which was dedicated to your nephew. That's correct. Yes. And then now this book is written is is the main character Mason. Is the main character is Mason.
So, my my better half was joking with me. He said, "No, your is not spoiled at all." I mean, every kid gets their own children's book. Of course they do. That's so true, right? It's like I don't know.
I just think that's super and it's something he'll remember like one day. Like like you know it'll be really cool at first and then he'll get to be like a teenager and then like when his first girlfriend comes over like his mom will be like, "Hey, remember when your aunt Karen made this book about?" He's like, "Stop it." And then when he gets to be like 30, his own kid, then he's like, "Yeah, kids. I'm cool. There was a book written about me."
I love it. People can pick it up on Amazon. People can pick it up on Noodles. Oodles of noodles. Heck yeah. I love it.
All right, we've come to the final part of the show. We have a few fun segments for you. The first one is our younger years segment. It's brought to you by our friends at Or Fellowship. They're a great organization here in Indiana helping develop young business leaders across the state. Karen, what advice would you give to your 22-year-old self?
It all comes together. Just calm down. in those early years where you're getting started in a job or a career and you really want to be taken seriously and make an impact and I also had aspirations to make the world a better place and it just felt like I keep trying and trying and it it's not coming together the way I pictured. Well, when I compound now over many years friendships and travels and a network that I've built and experiences that I've had, a whole lot of that effort pays off later. So just kind of calm down, let it play out. It kind of works itself out.
You just don't know that then. Amen. I love it. It's like calm down as in like relax a little bit, but just keep working hard and it starts to compound. Similar to the stock market. Yes.
Compounding. There we go. I mean, food is obviously a a huge part of your life and way you share a meal. I know we said that it doesn't matter what's on the table, right? It's more of who's around the table. But if you had to pick a recipe that just reminds you of family, home, community, what would you pick?
Our homemade spaghetti and meatballs. I mean, can you go wrong there? No. Is there a secret? So, is there a secret to it? We raise our own tomatoes and can the juice.
So, I mean, it's for real from scratch. Okay. So, there it is. Grow grow the garden and then harvest the tomatoes and then that's what what's going to help you make uh the the famous spaghetti and meatballs. Yes. I have uh my own recipe for spaghetti.
It's called Spangghetti. And I have a top secret recipe. I actually just gave it to my friends. I gave them the recipe for the first time ever. And I put like the top secret uh like folders together and gave it to them for Christmas so they could enjoy it with their families. You are obviously big into podcast books.
Is there a specific podcast or a specific book that has influenced your career the most? The book What Got You Here Won't Get You There is a great read. I think of it now as kind of a timeless classic. And here's what I like about it. At every stage of your career, you can be successful. It's just that what made you successful and maybe even satisfied at one point in your career doesn't necessarily translate to the next promotion and the next promotion or the next role and the next role because the context is different and so are the expectations.
And so it goes through this predictable list of limiting behaviors that are things you kind of become strengths overused that you kind of need to let go of as you move forward. What got you here won't get you there. What got you here won't get you there. Amazing. That's a good wreck. Man, this is so good.
All right, I have three questions that we ask every guest that comes on. The first one, what's something the world needs to know about Indiana? It's awesome and you have to visit it. We have so much art, culture, sports, entertainment, fascinating people, and diversity. Boom. She's doing my job for me.
There it is. That's the highlight reel. Next, uh, when they visit, what is a hidden gem in Indiana? A hidden gem in Indiana is the catacombs underneath of City Market. Can you go down there still? You can still go down there several times a year.
Yes, that is a hidden gem. Okay. So, do you know any like what's the history or like how does it Very Prohibition era. Oh, that's when all of the booze got buried underground was in the catacombs underneath of City Market. Yes. And on the day that prohibition was revealed, repealed, excuse me, there is a party down there every single year.
So, you can actually get tickets and go down there. Little candle light and, you know, dress in your 1920s. Catacombs Indianapolis party Indianapolis. Mhm. Wow. Yeah.
You can take tours. Well, I do think that right now they might be they're doing some renovations to him or whatever, but like I had talked with Zack Spicer who did the duel like the big movie and they filmed a portion of it down in the catacombs and I mean they look very spooky but very cool. I thought that's a really good hidden gem. Okay, final question. This helps us source new guests and just give share the love with with some other Hoosiers. Who's a Hoosier that we need to keep on our radar?
Someone who's doing big things. Michael Alt, the executive director of Heartland Film. Many people would be surprised to discover that the Heartland International Film Festival here in Indianapolis is a qualifying round for the Oscars. Heartland Film encompasses opportunities for students who are in high school to have filmmaking opportunities, universities, there's a shorts film festivals, there's the International Film Festival. Kind of the same as a Sundance Can Film Festival. And it happens here in Indianapolis.
All kinds of cool celebrity actors, directors, producers come. You can watch lots of films. He is doing great things with putting Indianapolis on the map as a creator place and bringing people together with compelling reasons to visit Indie. Oh yes, we had Greg uh Sorvig on the show maybe right before last year's H Heartland Film Festival and he gave us all the the info and stuff like all the theaters that they tap from uh Can Can to Living Room to I mean all the cool the Toby at New Field. Yes. Right.
Like so many cool spots. Uh do you go every year? Oh yes, I go every year. If you don't do your due diligence from the outside looking in, you're like, "Okay, it's like a local film festival." Then you realize, "Oh, shoot. This is a big deal."
Yes. And in fact, at our shorts film festival, we had Noah Emmerick here, the guy from The Truman Show and The Americans. He had never been to Indiana before, and he was in a short film called The Ice Cream Man. And it's a World War II era film. They filmed it at Zaheracos Ice Cream Shop in Columbus, Indiana because it most replicated the place in Amsterdam in which the story is set. He came, he was at our film festival.
He was at the reception. He was the nicest person. I introduced everyone to him. We asked if he had been to Indiana before. He said no. We asked what he thought.
He loved it. Nicest person. But it's I mean this A-list celebrity and I'm of course they served ice cream by the way at the event which was great. most chill person, but you're thinking these are a-list people and also upandcomers and everyone in between telling all kinds of stories. I mean, there's something for everyone. I've watched documentaries that I'm not sure I fully understood because they were so smart.
I've watched uh very cheeky animated fun short films. I mean, there's just a little something for everyone. But Michael Alt really has a vision not just for that organization but for really how this puts Indiana on the map as a place for creators and and really building our creator economy and I love that. I couldn't say as a creator it's it's good to have uh yeah have people working that way and building that community for creators. I will say the 34th Heartland International Film Festival is scheduled to to take place October 9th through the 19th of 2025. Um, so if you want to, you know, go, I don't know if they have tickets or anything released yet, but just put it on your calendar, get ready to rock there.
Yeah. October, yeah, 9th through the 19th. Um, so, you know, you can just go and you don't have I think people think of, and I said this to Greg, people think of festival. I think of like music festival. It's like, oh, you have to go, you have to do all 10. It's like, no, you can just go to one show, right?
Like, you could just go see one show. You can go to one event, one thing. You don't have to do everything. uh you could just like go get a taste for you know one of the shorts or anything like that. So uh well Karen thank you for coming on. It's it was awesome to catch up and hear about all the cool things that EIG is doing when it comes to AI and kind of like uh Roxy this this new um platform that you guys are taking to market as well as learn more about your grandfather Salvatore and I mean obviously your book and and oodles and noodles the new one coming out.
So we appreciate you stopping by. This is super fun. Thank you. It's always great to be around your high energy There we go. All right. Well, we'll catch you next time.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Get In. If you like what you heard, make sure you leave us a review wherever you listen to podcast. This show is made possible by our friends up at Sweetwater. Whether you're looking to start a podcast or take your content to the next level, click the link in the description to see all my gear recommendations at sweetwater. com. If you want a behind-the-scenes look at everything we're doing across the state, make sure you follow me on Instagram and Tik Tok, Nate Spangle.
Thank you so much for listening and being part of what makes the Hoosier State great. We'll see you next time here on Get
