Why Founders Must Rethink Their Teams in the Age of AI

Leave here you got the door and always be straight forward and honest. People who will want to work with you will work with you. I don't think I'm smarter than anyone on my team or else why the hell would they be there? I think with those things in mind, it allows me to be honest with my team open. I'm not anyone on my team's competitor. There's nothing in me that wants to feel better than you. I want you to feel like you want to be here because at the end of the day, the truth is each one of those people on your team are building your dream. Most business advice is wrong. Built on opinions echoed by people who've never done it. But the truth, it's simpler and harder. You don't win by following the playbook. You win by rewriting it. 700 episodes deep with the people who actually built something real. No theory, no fluff, no shortcuts. This is right about now with Ryan Alford. Hello and welcome to right about now. We're always mixing things up. You never know what to expect even with our countdowns for our guests. I am excited today. I'll be honest. You do this show of had 700 guests. Sometimes I get in here and I start talking with the guests. I'm going to Java this person but we're going to make some lemonade out of lemons. I don't have a problem today. We have the lovely Veronica Shelton. She is the co-founder of Oak Theory. What's up Veronica? What's up Ryan? Hi, how are you? I am fabulous. Read everything you've done. All the brands you're working with are doing with Oak Theory. It's cool. What the hell is Oak Theory? Oak Theory, we're a product design studio. Now we're calling ourselves a creative tech studio. We build product software applications, digital experiences, and just flow with it, full service. How did you get into this? Nothing gets my attention like neuro spicy creativity. I am neuro typical. I have autism but level one that played a huge part in me being within the industry that I'm in. I'm obsessed with and not just tech but how humans use it and how we adapt to things. Which is going crazy right now with a guy. There's a huge psychological side to it. What's the key to success? Because everybody wants the blueprint. A lot of people listen to each other wanting to get the cheat sheet from people like yourself and others curiosity. The most successful people are the most curious people I know. They have to like figure something out. Because if you don't have that, then you probably aren't solving a problem that you would get paid to solve anyway. If you're curious about something, go deeper. You just like something like, oh, like this business. I'm just going to do this business surface level. Well, you'll just stay in that space. You'll never get more. You're a woman of color. You got two things that are very untypical for that space. Being both a woman and a woman of color. What's that been like? And what my friends call a gallery trooper. I'm always happy. Smile glued. Even in that situation, I feel like it's been such a superpower. I have a perspective that not a lot of people have because of who I am. I bring that to the table with everything. The way you look at tech is probably different sometimes in the way I look at experiences and tech. In the way that I even have to go into meetings and how I am listened to versus not listen to sometimes. There's been, of course, these learning moments. I rather call them learning the negative across the board. There's been a lot of positive in it. If you're vocal about the value that you bring and you don't hide it, it leaves a lot of space for us to lean in and focus on innovation and how to do things and stay curious about things together. What I think wouldn't Veronica's perspective because she's smart. She understands the stuff. The diversity that you bring. I'm totally stereotyped, Pearson. I don't need another dorky 27-year-old guy telling me something about tech. What do you think when you have those discussions or you're working with clients? What do you think that diversity and thought process for you? What colors do you paint with? What do you think changes from your perspective when you get in those discussions about technology or building products? With technology, the one beautiful thing that I like about it is similar to math. Certain demographic data doesn't matter. A lot of times with tech, it's more so about our brain, how we navigate things. That's something we share across the board as humans. It brings us together. It's why there's so much unity in it because there's so little bias that is surface level. It's all here. Usually the conversations never have to do with how I look until we get past luck. A lot of times when clients come in and they meet Hannah and I. Hannah is Korean. I'm black. We're both women. People do not expect us to be who we are because of the biases and shit that's out there. That is a mountain that we have to climb over in a lot more meetings than I'd like to admit to be able to get to the good stuff. Usually we've had more times where you guys would be working on the project. Hi. Who's the tech lead? Hi. Really? Yes. Can we please just I promise you if we can get to it, you'll understand. Google, Disney and Sephora. Can you talk about the types of projects or things you've done with some of these companies? With Disney, I was working on children's books. I got to creative drag. Quite a few big titles, which was really fun. And that was me working with brilliant artists and copywriters and routine team publishing. There was a lot of different books that I worked on. It was going into a project, doing a global campaign with the humongous Up and E, Nika Company. And that was working on things all the way from figuring out what models we're going to use. I was very vocal about being a black woman in tech. I stayed back then, but it was maybe 10 years ago, eight years ago. It was a bit more on the publishing side with Sephora. It's like, hey, you have these models. You have one type of Asian model. You have one type of black model, one type of Latina model. If we look at some of the stats, I was able to come to the table and be like, if we look at the numbers, this is not what they all look like. You see the models that have a look that's not commercial enough for it to probably attract the demographic you're going for. Here's numbers to prove what I'm saying, so it doesn't sound stupid. Same with Blame Sonomo. I was able to work on a project that introduced the first family of black family in their catalog. So those are things that were raised related in those projects. And then we go to things like Google working on their diversity supplier platform, which is bigger. It's a bigger issue when it comes to diversity because we're talking about a lot of people across the board. Google's huge of global. We're looking at a diversity platform. It's not a black and white thing. There's people of all shades and all colors and all backgrounds who go into that fun projects to work on. On the diversity side, how do you balance? If there's sides to an argument, diversity for diversity's sake versus getting the best whatever for whatever it might be. The best solution or the best diverse solution. Those things aren't always the easiest to align, are they? They should always align. Diversity is not just race is age, ableism, gender, anything that you can do. There's some people who can't function their hands the same as others. There's some people who are colorblind. There's some people who are dyslexic. Those are all things that come into tech that a lot of people miss when we're talking diversity. It's ageism. There's some people who can't see text that's below 14 points. With technology and how we use it, tech is only as good as how easy and accessible it is for the user. Otherwise, it's a waste. You get the best product in the world. The best application is smartest tool. Open AI still needs a UI team. Replexity, Google, they still need a team of designers, UI specialists, psychologists, anthropologists to make sure that their tool works well for people. They have to work together. You have to have diversity in tech. Use the word that I like better than diversity. Accessibility is really what it's about. It's making complex things accessible to diverse groups that might not always be representative or thought of. Accessibility really helps frame it better. This isn't about diversity for diversity. It is that accessibility because we're all blinded by our own ignorance sometimes and not what's in our sphere of influence. If I don't see through the eyes of these people, what they go through, how they do things, that is what has to get unlocked. That's the superpower you bring is that accessibility to diverse groups. It's the empathy towards accessibility. It's becoming more mainstream. People are understanding it. Now people are talking about it now. We have the TikToks and the social sites where it's even the Neurospiciness came from somewhere right. It's because people now understand where it comes from and what it means. I'm happy with the direction we're going and which accessibility is becoming very important. What's been your favorite project? I love all my projects. I love all my clients. You guys are all amazing. Maybe you weren't sure what it was going to be, but Dan, you walked away proud and excited about it. My favorite project right now is Under the Oak. It's a media project that we're working on that's coming from Oak Beary. We're very technical. We build. We make products. We make software. We build applications. And it's very project focused. The team is very project focused. We have an amazing team. We're working on this new thing where at the end of the day we're still human. Sometimes we can get lost in trying to make things more efficient and trying to burn out of trying to make everything. It has to be super profitable. It has to be all these things. Under the Oak brings in that psychological side. That pan and I needed honestly as a breakaway to be like when we do work on projects that feel maybe a little heavy. With AI coming in, there's a lot of projects that are coming in where there's this feeling of this is so smart. This is so great. But how is this going to affect mankind? What are we seeing happening? How is this affecting our brains? How is this affecting our youth? How is this affecting how we interact with people? We know we're smart girls. So we know based on research that a lot of the things that are happening right now with AI and just with technology in general. We've seen some Asian countries like Japan how that can lead to isolation and depression and certain groups of people. We see it in places in Europe and even in America with the youth losing their critical thinking skills. We wanted a place where we could talk about those things openly and more from an emotional side. That's my favorite project right now. What does this actually mean for how our kids are developing? It's important to look at things especially with gaming and children. There's a lot of games that are being government funded and processes and things that are being government funded because our youth are going to lose a huge part of how they have cognitive abilities. They're not going to have the same critical thinking skills that we have. I'm a millennial. We're part of a really huge transformational era. We went from cassette tapes to now music being pulled out of thin air. We've adapted really quickly. But now we're in a place where adapting is insane. It's faster than that. If you look at how we've changed over time and how we've become dependent. We used to never have cell phones in our hands. It wasn't a way of living. Now you cannot go without a cell phone in your hand. You are completely dependent. Your whole life depends on it. How you connect with your friends and family depend on it. You don't even know what writing a letter or a stamp look like these days. It's completely changed how we do things. Coffee later is out the door. So if you think about that and you think that that is what we can consider a healthy timeline to adjust. If you squish that, probably I would say condense that a hundred times. That's the timeline that this new generation has to adapt to a new way of being. Technology. You just have expectations of technology. Now we're at a place where technology is now having expectations of us. How we work, how we live, how we think. These are really huge things to consider when we're looking at AI and how these things come in. Let's talk about it. Definitely not talked about enough. I came up in analog world. We converted to digital. And now we're going from digital. And this is one second of thought. Probably a better word to generative. Because analog and digital still require a poll. I'm grabbing something versus it's now generative. It's creating itself and pushing. Whether it's digital or analog, we're pulling information. We're pulling songs. We're pulling data. Now it's pushing out. There's this rumor going around with Jeff Bezos vying vogue for his wife. If he did it, it's exactly what we're trying to do now. Even when we started and wanted to be the condense of this generation. Those magazines, those are things that kind of kept us grounded. They had the quizzes in it and they had all these things that just kept us in this place where we still have fun. We're still able to look at things without this new culture to be more efficient, be more productive. Oh, you like doing that thing? Here's how to make millions doing that thing. And it's yes, yes, but that's not all life has to offer. You need to remember yourself and what's going on in here. You have kids. They still need to experience outside. These influencers and all this stuff. But here's the effects that that can have on them. And maybe some healthy ways in which you can go about it. We're still figuring this out. There's just this conversation that is missing in this new transformation, a new era of AI. You shouldn't be having all those conversations with AI. All those conversations need to be had among humans who are experiencing things. Dog with Veronica Shelton, she is the co-founder of Oak Theory. I love that name. Old and new. Yeah, old Oak Wood versus theories, like sounds so high tech. Yes. Very good branding. I like it. The grounded. Thank you. Is this print? Is this digital? Bring on digital. It's blogs. It's articles. We even have a podcast. It's a digital media platform that we're building out just to have those conversations about where we're at and tech and where things are going. There's definitely a lot of white blue ocean space for that type of content. It's unlimited. We work on a lot of projects that are coming in that are technical and especially building with AI. A lot of times there's a lot of research that goes into building things out. We might have a school that approaches us and they want to develop new ways to get their students to buy products from their store. We have to go into the psychological aspect of what makes them want to do that. What can hit them in certain places? Why do we still like nostalgia? What triggers us in nostalgia to make us want to buy something? Those are psychological things that we probably don't look at off the shelf. Like we're like, oh, it's just buying something but it's like, no, there's a reason why you looked at that product, that target. It was a color that made you feel something and suddenly you're picking up something. You didn't even come into the store for how you're getting it. There's a psychological side to it. When we have projects come in though, we want to be able to talk about those things and what we gain from our research and bring that to the public. Under the opus kind of our way to do that. We do it with permission, of course, but it's like, hey, we did a lot of research on this thing that shows what we were talking about earlier. How certain tools that your kids are using and really affect their critical thinking skills. Here are some ways that we've learned can help. Here are some ways that we've learned are impacting it. Take with it what you will. Open conversation. Imagine you're on the forefront of seeing different technologies, software or hardware side. Are you seeing stuff that would blow people's minds or is it more practical than you think? The biggest thing that everyone's talking about is AI and where it's going. It's the best tool that's ever existed. There's so much that's coming from it from building agentic environments. That's a whole new world of its own and mind of its own. My excitement honestly goes into something that we're not going to get to for a while, but it's AR. It's quiet right now on purpose, but AR is probably where I'm definitely focusing a lot of attention to know about because I do think that's going to be the future. We're going through this evolution. That's probably going to be the big one. That's going to be the cell phone of just having augmented elements and reality in our world. That's probably what's making me excited. I can go down the deepest tunnel with accessibility features and why that's great. It's going to change the game for a lot of people whose brains and skill sets we haven't been able to experience. I have an amazing team. I have a team of brilliant people. We started Oak Theory five years ago. We had designated spaces for them. Designers were designers, engineers were engineers, developers or developers, sales or sales. Now that we're in this new place for the past year, this is where we're seeing this huge shift in Dops and what people are capable of. Designers are now able to develop coffee writers, people who weren't nationally creative are able to create. It's creating such a fluid space in work environments that it's ridiculous. On top of that, I've been struggling as a founder with the integrity to keep your team and not replace them with AI because AI is coming in and doing a lot of things that project management wise and things like that are just no brainer. You don't need it anymore like you used to, but you still need that human side. There's this really cool area that I've been playing around with where it's being very transparent with a team like, hey, jobs are changing. We need to adapt. Creative person, now that you have AI, what else can you do? Suddenly, our designer is able to write things. We're able to have coffee writing done by them and they can finish projects easier. Suddenly, our developers, our engineers are working across the board on in every area. I can't even go in to how vast our skill set or how wide range our skill set is now is because of this one tool. Our sales is able to put together their own pitch decks without having to go to design. That saves us a lot of money a year. That's something that I really find interesting and I'm working on processes after processes. We've replaced our team in the past year. I will be honest. It saved us mid six figures and in that we've been able to do so much more. And our team has become so more that it's almost like a new kind of core where our team works together in such a fluid way. Our Monday's and Thursday meetings are the most amazing things I've ever seen because they're touching so many things. Now it's not so horrible to be a jack of all trades. It's not so horrible to say I have a team that does a lot because it doesn't feel like they're carrying as much anymore. In fact, they're like learning and having fun with it. So that is a place where I think is really fun and having them work with agents is really interesting. Watching them work with the agents that were built in this like hybrid environment. Stoping as hell. I own multiple companies. I worked in New York and I had a team of a hundred people work to the Add agency world. This is way before AI and it will build exactly the thing you're talking about. I was always sort of a jack of all trades in the Add agency world. And it was not the most popular thing because the Add agency world especially likes putting people in boxes. You're the creative person, you're the writer, you're the account person, you're the strategy person, the media person. There are the account person ever be creative, strategic and I was the strategic creative account guy that made the agency a lot of money but wasn't always the most popular. And I started my agency radical with the intent to create sort of a flat environment way before AI and agents because I knew you're not extracting the best out of people. Yes, you need specialization and you need to know what your job is and what your functions are. And I always believed you weren't always extracting the best out of your team when you limited them to only one function. Yes, just there. No one's behold. That proved to be successful and then AI has come around and I had the exact discussion with my team. I had close to 20 employees four years ago. We have less than a quarter of that now. You have only fired one person. It's just been a natural evolution of leaving and going other places and me not replacing as some of these technologies have come along. I had that exact discussion that you did and a lot of business owners are having to have this discussion with their teams to go. This can do a lot of what your job was. I believe in you and you are talented and I need you to embrace this and I'm not going to fire you. You need to understand that you need to be doing not just more, but you just got to work more. No, you don't have to work more work the same hours, but the output should be 10X. Cause of what these agents are doing and you're no longer just this. You can be the writer and the designer and the developer and your agent can help you do these things with product task management. If people aren't embracing that, they will be jobless. But if you embrace it, it will be just fine. It has to be accepted because you need a team that can be fluid and grow with you. And honestly, it's such a battle because we've had people who are like, well, I don't want to. I know you don't want to, but this is us changing software. You have to adjust to the new software. You can't just say, I don't want to learn it. Cause if you don't, then we can't do anything now together. And I feel like that's what's happening now. We're moving over to this new way of thinking. It is going to be the way of thinking. We have to stay, float, we're a business. And if you're not on it and you can't do it, that means you can't adapt. If you can't adapt, we can't grow as a business. We have to adapt. That's the whole point. We have to embrace it though. They have to embrace it. Those who embrace it will have plenty of work, but it's just you have to leverage it and going to be those that leverage it and those that don't. And then if you don't, you need to go get skills trade or something, be a plumber. Be it something with your hands that hasn't been replaced yet. Intel, right? Intel. They're CEO just had to make that big announcement that they did that. They did not adapt fast enough. They're out of the game. They can't even compete. Their CEO had to say that we failed because that's what happened when leadership doesn't adapt. That's right. So we can see that on a huge scale how that affects everyone. Now everyone who is like. It's leadership's job to coach everyone that this is the new reality and you've got to come along because if leadership puts their head in the sand, then everybody's out of a job because the company's out of business. I've seen friends companies where they have leaders or people just don't want to do it. In their minds, they know what works because that's what's always worked. And now their life upshits creek. If there's one thing as a company, we've definitely nailed is we're very chill as a company. We're four day work week. We're not really on everyone's ass all the time. But when we have hard truths like this, this is when we kind of sit the hell down. We got it. This is real. The hard conversations was pretty soft because it's we left so much open for. Where do you see yourself evolving? You have to do it. You have to evolve as this is what's happening to your role here. Let's use this same tool to show you where skillset could take you. Where do you want to go? Okay. How is that going to bring value to the company? Like these are conversations we've had with each and every team member. A developer. You're doing front end right now. Now we have these tools. By next week, I wanted to see you introduce three other tools to me that will allow you to expand your skillset using AI. We'll pay for it. We'll fund it. We pay for them to learn. We pay for their classes. But you have to grow. We're going to have to replace you because now we won't be able to compete. And if we can't compete, we can't feed everybody. We got family. People with families. We're not about to let them not eat just because you asked was to sit here and say, well, I'm comfortable doing this. It's real conversations that are being had but it's made such a top of our team and we're stronger than ever. We got robots talking in the team. It feels seamless and it feels beautiful and it feels just as homey and cozy as it always felt. It doesn't have to be uncomfortable unless you make it that way. It should be exciting because for me, I've loved it. Not because by employee cost lower. I loved it because how much more productive I know how I could think and spend more time on the stuff that matters versus mundane things. And so if you are embracing that reality, then that's the problem. Not the other way around. It gives us space to focus on what matters. It gives us space to look at projects and now because so many of those mundane little tasks that had to grow into a project that more tactical, more step by step of process, those can get done. And so now we could focus on real problems and how to solve them. That's even what gave us the room to start this under the O because we were able to now say, holy shit, look at how the psychological things are going into this. It's what gives us space to do more. And I'm watching it with friends companies. A lot of people are starting sub-rans and other companies now within their company because of this. It gives you room to see things that you couldn't see before because you're so focused on getting the project done. Now the projects are getting done more efficiently, less hands on deck. You're able to really have a wider look and range on what you're working on and why and there's a beauty in that. You seem like a great leader. Has that been nature or nurture that your leadership? Both. A lot of humility. I don't know if it's a neuro spicy thing, but I think if there's one thing I tell everyone, how do you tell me first? I'm like, if you're at the door and always be straightforward and honest, people who will want to work with you will work with you. You'll see patterns immediately with people always pick up on that. But I leave my ego at the door. I don't think I'm smarter than anyone on my team or else why the hell would they be there with those things in mind? It allows me to be honest with my team and open. I'm not anyone on my team's competitor. I'm like, there's nothing in me that wants to feel better than you. I want you to feel like you want to be here because at the end of the day, the truth is each one of those people on your team are building your dream. And you're giving them freedom. I offer freedom tokens, pay for what you're doing. That's the trade off. And then the day they're building something for me. And if they want to be a part of it, that's great because I'm like, listen, I'll do whatever I can to make sure you're part of this or I honey. I'll make sure that you're in it that you feel like it's home. I think there is that ego thing where you have to drop it aside and be like, that is the hard truth though. If you hire right talent that you feel like you cannot replace, there's a lot of value that you put on them under the oak. Sounds like a podcast to me. And I have a podcast now versus we should talk more about that. We should. We have so many recordings already things that we talk about and it's just putting it out there. And I think you know you've been doing this for a while. There's that perfectionism thing that comes in and there's like this thing that we're working through and still trying to get through. And especially because I'm buying a very opinion based with my conversations and we're still getting through. That's what makes us spicy. Listen, that is my personality. We're figuring it out, but it's really fun. And I'm really excited about the conversations we're having. We're here to keep up with everything you're doing. O theory.co.co.co.co.co. My social and anyone who wants to reach out to me is Vershilton. I'm on Insta and everything else and you can follow me on LinkedIn. But under the oak.co we have a contact. Reach out if you want to reach out. It's tough. We're always open to work on new projects and funding things. Well, you are awesome. You look great. Let's stay in touch. I'm serious. Hey guys, you don't have to find us. Ryan is right.com. You'll find highlight clips from today's episode. With the full episode download of links to YouTube, we appreciate you for making us. Number one, we'll see you next time. Right about now. Here's the truth. Information doesn't change your life. Execution does. So don't just listen to this episode and move on. Take the idea. Make the call. Launch the thing. Fix the problem. Build what you keep talking about building. For more follow Ryan Alford on Instagram at RyanAlford and watch or listen to every episode at RyanIsRight.com. This is right about now. Now quit waiting. Go win.