When AI Can Do More, What Makes You Valuable? | Will Croushorn

Will Croushorn (00:00)
We don’t know where this next horizon is going, but the opportunity right now is we get to write that history. And so find the things that you’re curious about. Be really passionate about serving people and taking care of people and meeting those core needs. Because if you’re curious and hungry and you’re serving people and meeting needs, and you’re using these tools in ways that you know nobody’s ever thought of before, there’s so much opportunity to reinvent the wheel, so to speak.

Zach Thompson (00:39)
Hey, welcome back to the Marketer Exchange. I’m Zach Thompson and I am delighted to be back in the Haslem College of Business with my guest Will Kraushorn. He is leading AI in the physical world at Wendy’s and also doing some work at Caltech. So really excited to have him here. Will, thanks so much for coming.

Will Croushorn (00:55)
Thank you, Zach. I’m excited to be here. yeah, Will Crosshorn, I helped lead and build Fresh AI at Wendy’s. and then also am instructor of AI product management at Caltech. have had the most crazy career. stent in film school helped start a school in the Middle East. and then when, you know, had my first prompt with Chat GPT, and I said, there’s something there, I want to help lead that. And

the rest is history, as they say.

Zach Thompson (01:25)
We’ve been hearing a lot about agentic and things over the last year, right? People talking about agentic a lot more. workflows are changing. We’ve got chat GPT dots released recently, meta muse, Muse.

Will Croushorn (01:38)
I just had my first call. Well did you?

Zach Thompson (01:39)
Yeah. Okay. All right. Fantastic. I want to hear about that. and GrokBot right? Obviously doing a lot more with agentic. So you know, what is a a native AI workflow look like for you now and the work that you’re doing?

Will Croushorn (01:51)
Yeah, it’s wild because I feel like it’s every time I think I’m starting to figure it out, it changes about two weeks later. yeah. I I think right now for me it looks like a couple of things. one, it is literally every day, it’s just setting aside a little bit of time to go try out, you know, a little on the way here calling dot and having that experience and go, okay, well this changes how I work.

You know, I think there’s some really basic things. it’s changed how I organize my files in Google Drive and making sure that like one, it has access, but two, it’s organized in a way that, you know, as I’m trying new tools, it’s able to access that data. it it really is fascinating though. You know, I I’ve used you know, I feel like with every new model you kind of switch over to claw or to chat GPT or most recently for me it was Grokbot.

With H new release, it definitely changes the way that you work just a little bit. either it’s integrated more. I mean, I think one of the newest things, I started using town. really big fan of it. and you can text with it, just like SMS or iMessage. And it’s subtle, but that it’s just like in my workflow, or just like my day to day is I don’t text with you. Those little subtle things change the way that you approach it or think about it.

Fascinating world.

Zach Thompson (03:20)
So with the chat GPT dots, you just had a phone call. I’ve not had the opportunity to do that yet. So tell me a little bit more about that. Is it like talking to the Chat GPT voice or how does that work?

Will Croushorn (03:27)
So it’s very similar. So one of the things I’ve been using voice for about a year now. one of my favorite things to do is I will put it on voice and say, Hey, I have five minutes, teach me something new. And so I’ll go down some crazy route trails of just like getting my thoughts going and and new ideas. and so I find dot to be super very similar. nuances in how quickly I mean it literally is it calls and it rings.

Which the first time I I tried it was a little, I don’t know, there’s something well, this is a different. but the interaction itself, very similar to using voice. it just it has more context of your entire way of working and all of the conversations that you’ve had. a lot quicker responses. I definitely think we’re gonna see more of that as we move forward in the future.

Zach Thompson (04:21)
With these models, you know, changing, updating so frequently, right? They’re getting major updates every three months. So they’re becoming much more capable. So how important does, you know, context, judgment, tastes from from a human perspective, how how important does that become as they become more capable?

Will Croushorn (04:38)
Yeah, I think it becomes incredibly important. you know, and and we’re seeing we’re seeing massive improvements with these models, right? I just had actually, so I I mentioned earlier this tool called Town. And one of the things that I did was I had it it gives me a a morning update on here’s everything that you missed, here’s everything that’s important, and I’ve also having it scrape, you know, what’s the latest news and AI.

Just because it’s, you know, it’s like drinking out of a fire hydrant. And recently it gave me the update, but it knew to go into my emails and somebody had sent me a transcript from their meeting. It went into those transcripts, read through the entire transcript, and then in my morning brief said, Hey, you missed this. Here’s context you probably need to know. that was the first time I’d ever seen that level of intentionality. And it was genuinely helpful because it was something that I needed to know.

You know, but the the thing that I’ve learned as we’ve scaled out AI in the drive-thru, you know, there’s a hundred and fifty thousand orders a day, for a hundred million orders or customers coming through a total. so it’s one of the largest implementations of AI in the physical world. but the thing that we’ve learned is it I think is the digital world, I mean, my guess is by the end of this year, early next year, anything that is online.

will have been consumed by the models or will be able to be connected. you see Grokbot where it’s able to actually have its own, you know, computer and it’s able to pretty much go anywhere. I think the next frontier is the physical world because if it doesn’t have context of, you know, what’s happening in this room or my emotion or, you know, that humans are very complex. The real world is very complex. And so I think that’s kind of that next frontier for both where models go, but then where, you know,

Implementing the world has a completely different consequence if it goes right or if it goes wrong. That’s where I think the human piece really comes in.

Zach Thompson (06:41)
How do you decide, you know, what to delegate? I mean, these again, these tools are so capable, they’re so powerful. they can do a lot of this work for you. I mean, that’s really interesting hearing about this phone call too. I’m kind of excited to try it now. I mean, also that’s just really interesting that there’s this very human experience of making a phone call. Like that’s not necessary, I wouldn’t think, for that experience, but they’ve tried to maybe make it more human or feel more human to us, maybe.

What what is the role of of judgment and you know, for for humans to make a decision about what to delegate, right? How are you doing that? How do you decide I’m gonna get the AI to do this versus I’m gonna do it myself? Yeah.

Will Croushorn (07:18)
I don’t think it’s a binary answer.

It the word that I become sort of obsessed with is craft. you know, there are some things like in Nashville where I live, you know, we have hatch print and they’re over there hand making the posters for the Ryman. Like that’s not something we ever want to delegate. Like there’s something beautiful about like this was super intentional. It’s on a press that’s, you know, over a hundred years old.

it’s intense, there’s a limited supply of it. Like there’s just an art and it’s a very human thing. I think in the world that we’re moving to, I see two things happening. If it can be automated, it will be because it removes friction, it’s easier. You know, you think of a a big brand like say Disney, if they can use these AI tools to create experiences that just didn’t exist before. You know, can you order from your favorite character or

Can you walk in and you know, they do a drone show and it’s like magic all around you, like things that just weren’t possible even a couple of months ago. And so I think there is a level of you know, can we can we automate those things or can we use these tools to create experiences or to help people in ways that we couldn’t ever do before? I think at the same time you also have this human renaissance is the the phrase that I use of, you know,

Yes, you could automate making a lasagna or pasta, but like that doesn’t replace my grandmother’s pasta or the print shop or live music with humans. and I I think you’re gonna see a split of both. I think what we haven’t really figured out yet, and we don’t know it’s coming, in the nineteen twenties they had no idea about what would become the computer and gaming and you know, all the things that we live with in you know our current age.

We have no idea what’s coming with music and with art and with creativity and, you know, you named it industry. we’re in the very, very early days of electricity, so to speak.

Zach Thompson (09:28)
You talked about you know, using town to kind of keep you up to date with what’s going on in AI. I mean, you’ve built these been a part of building these amazing AI tools and that have incredible reach and and growth and expansion and and number of orders and things. but what other ways are you keeping on top of what’s happening in an AI you said drinking from a fire hose. It feels like that a lot, right? So how are you keeping up with what’s changing, with what’s happening?

Will Croushorn (09:52)
Yeah, you know, it’s it’s funny. I d I think there’s a a couple of things that I intentionally do. and some of them are very human and very analog. So, you know, every morning I’m getting an update from my agent and it’s saying, Hey, here’s the thing that you need to stay on top of. And so that’s how I I’m trying to just stay on top of, you know, what’s the latest thing. From there, that’s giving me ideas for I should go try this, or maybe I should implement this into my data architecture or

my workflows or how the team is working together. But then there’s a couple of other things that I found really, really important. One is, you know, this past Saturday, I went to the coffee shop for two hours and I’m reading a book on just like the future of AI. And there’s something about physically reading about this topic that, you know, I need to stay on top of, working through the pages. But then I’m taking those notes, I’m taking a picture and I’m sending it to ChatGPT with my notes and

pictures of the book and I’m saying, hey, let me work through this. And so that blend between the physical world and the digital world, they’re starting to, you know, really merge together, at least in far as my process. The last thing that I think is absolutely crucial is community. So finding people who are curious, who are hungry. It doesn’t matter, you know, if you’re in AI, if you’re in real estate or you’re a tech startup.

Finding people around you who are also learning and asking good questions and just doing really cool things. some of the best ideas that we implemented in the drive-thream came from people in completely different fields and just kind of like a game of ping pong of ideas, like, wait, you’re trying that, let me try that as well. and so there’s ways to automate it, but then there’s a very human talking.

building those relationships and surrounding yourself with people who are in that same trajectory.

Zach Thompson (11:53)
Yeah, what one of the things I keep telling students is just build stuff, right? Keep building things. How important is I mean, the reading obviously, you know, you’re you’re able to, especially with physical books, gain a deeper knowledge than you would than the AI might just give you on a summary call with with talent on the way to work on the commute or something, right? So you’re getting that deeper level of knowledge. But how important is just building stuff to keep up with these models and what’s changing?

Will Croushorn (12:17)
Yeah, I think it’s you know, we humans we we learn by doing, right? and so and for me it starts with you have this curiosity or this itch and you go, wait a minute, can I can I do this? I’ll give you an example. I wanted to try out the new Claude model. I’m redoing my office and I wanted it to be more of a studio to be able to do, you know, interviews and such. And so I was like, well, let me test out Opus five point five. So I gave it my

pictures of the room and then I gave the same thing to ChatGPT. Opus created this entire 3D model that can turn around, you can change the lights. I mean it’s wild. ChatGPT didn’t get there. It will on the next update, I’m sure. but all of a sudden I had this whole 3D model of my room. It also gave me an entire shopping list of here’s what you can buy, you know, all each of these things. I’ve never done 3D modeling before.

You know, obviously not an expert in it by any means, but this is now something, okay, well, as I’m thinking through ideas, well, why don’t we just go create a a physical, tangible thing to take to the team? and so there’s something to taking that and building it and just seeing what works and what doesn’t. that 3D model, for example, I tried to do something very similar about a year ago. The models were nowhere near ready to do it. And so there’s something to

have the idea, go try it, see what sticks, see where the friction is, make note of the friction, come back to it in three months ’cause it’ll probably be able to do it then. You know.

Zach Thompson (13:52)
I mean, those those models are just updating so quickly. I saw a stat recently from an MIT study that I think a majority of well something like ninety-five percent of gen AI pilots are you know not really having an impact on profitability for those businesses, right? how much of that is down to businesses trying to bolt on AI to their existing workflow and and how much do they need to just just totally revamp their workflow?

Will Croushorn (14:17)
Yeah. I think there’s two parts to this. the first part is my belief is fundamentals don’t change. So, you know, if you’re a UPS, your goal is to deliver packages consistently the same time from point A to point B. It doesn’t matter if you’re using robotics, it doesn’t matter if you’re, you know, teleportation, whatever, you know, quantum computer, whatever comes out in the you know, the next three years.

That val that need, that human need to get something from point A to point B, safely, consistently, cheaply, doesn’t go there. you’re a fast food brand. you know, customers want fresh food. They want it fast, they want it clean service, they want an experience. That core fundamental doesn’t change. What does change is the delivery and how we can meet those needs. So, you know, again, back to Disney. If you’re Disney, all of a sudden you can offer.

You’re ordering from your favorite character in a way that just wasn’t possible before. maybe, you know, we tested out drone delivery where you could order it on your phone and then all of sudden like it’s gonna fly to you and and drop it in your front porch. and so that that’s the new horizon. For real ROI, you have to be meeting those core needs. If you’re not providing really good service, if you’re not providing something that really meets a need.

Whether it’s known or, you know, there’s lots of opportunity for new things. You think about cell phones. Like people didn’t have a cell phone bill 20 years ago. They do now. And there’s a whole inf infrastructure that’s built around that for opportunities for business, et cetera. So it’s meeting those really core needs. And I think to that part of this bubble is if you think about in the early days of iPhone, everybody was creating these light apps.

It’s really cool, but it doesn’t actually do anything. It doesn’t actually add value other than, hey, look at this new thing. And I throw it away really cheaply or really quickly. And I think that’s what you’re seeing a lot of now is people are throwing, you know, look, I did this, you know, I created a a recreation of a Mario game. It was really cool. That’s where I haven’t touched it since I built it because it’s it’s cheap. It’s a commodity. The last thing that I’d add is.

We are, you know, I I we I’ve seen this with my own work. If you put models on the old world, it’s gonna struggle to work or operate, especially without that context, as she talked about earlier. I think about AI generation one point was something like what McDonald’s and IBM did, where they tried to have this rule based deterministic you know, there’s

200 billion ways to order the main sandwich out of Wendy’s. Like the real world is really complex. And so having these deterministic rule-based systems like just don’t work in the real world. Generation two is taking these models and putting it on top of a tech stack that’s not even 50 years old, anything that was built before you know 2024. I think the next generation is building from the ground up how you model the data, how you are you know, that entire architecture that gives it both the context.

the awareness and the agency to actually do things in the physical world. I think, you know, until we start to get a value and the right infrastructure, that’s where the real ROI comes about, in my opinion.

Zach Thompson (17:49)
So you talked about how cheaply a lot of this output can be produced, right? And that applies to the marketing world as well. So content analytics. What do you see the role of the marketer being in the future as these outputs become so inexpensive to produce?

Will Croushorn (18:03)
Yeah. Well, you know, I don’t have a I I can’t go. Crystal Wall. I know. We’re all we’re all learning these models the same week. I think it goes back to that core principle of fundamentals don’t change and human becomes more premium. you know, I was at a concert at the Ryman recently and there was something it was completely analog. it was just great musicians playing, and I noticed something

Most people didn’t have their phones out. And that’s a shift. And I think you’re going to see in in any technology technological age, there’s always people that really embrace it. And then there’s people that are a little bit more like I’m gonna lean into the old way of doing things. I think you’re gonna see that.

One of my favorite examples in this space is if you think back to the early days of photography, when the camera came out, it threw artist in a spin because the whole goal up to that point was realism, trying to recreate reality with a paintbrush. The camera comes out, it can do it a lot cheaper, a lot faster. But it doesn’t change what it means to be human. It just changes how we represent it.

And so, you know, that led to some people really leaning into realism. And but then you have, you know, people like Monet. And you have this whole revolt of like, well, we can communicate other things that you can’t in a picture. Fast forward 50, 60, 70 years, you get motion pictures and it comes full circle with 1937 Snow White. And so the art and the P like it’s just this progression.

animation is not something they could have thought about in the 1830s. And yet the art and the human side of it came full circle. I think it’s what we’re going to see in marketing. There it will be a leaning into how do you make noise, how do you stand out, how do you become different. I think there’s an importance of relationship. wait, I trust you. And so if you recommend this person, I’m gonna go to them. So that personal recommendation becomes really, really important. Adding value becomes important.

But there’s entirely new mediums that we don’t even we can’t conceive of yet that are right over the horizon.

Zach Thompson (20:25)
It’s such a difficult one to know, right? I mean, I think trust is such a big piece of the puzzle. It always has been with brands. You know, this is a brand I recognize. I know I can trust them. I’ve bought it before. But you know, as the the content is just so easily produced now, it’s so cheap and it’s it’s a lot of AI slop, right? So yeah, it it’s hard to know what the role of the marketer will be, but I feel like part of that’s gotta be in creating this trust with the consumer, right?

Will Croushorn (20:51)
You’re a you’re a steward of, hey, I’m building an audience, I’m building relationships so that when I say, Look here, go to this, it’s a thing where you know, it’s a product or it’s a service that’s actually worth offering. I I think it

There is a pressure that, and this happens with every new technological wave. You know, you think of the camera, an artist, it creates a pressure. and that pressure is hard, and I don’t mean to undermine, like it it creates a lot of change, which is difficult. But I think one of the things that you do see is you know, think about like online marketing, for example. Now, more and more I am going to ChatGPT and I’m saying, hey, I’m going on this vacation.

And you know all about me, where should I go? It is looking at the customer reviews of saying, wait, here’s this, this, and this, it’s my it’s tailored to you. But those Reddit reviews, those Google reviews, the feedback from real people becomes really, really valuable because that’s how it’s filtering out. So I, as the end consumer, actually benefit because I’m only getting the thing, it’s like only the best survives. So if you want to win, build strong relationships.

And build products and services that really serve people’s needs. Cause that’s going to come to the top, whether it’s through an agent or it’s through personal recommendation.

Zach Thompson (22:13)
Yeah. I mean, I’ve been hearing this called the two the two audience problem, right? Where you’re trying to create content for the bots, but also for humans. Yeah. and it just goes back to those old school fundamentals, right? Of just building relationships with consumers, creating products and offerings that people want to consume. Yeah. you talked earlier about personalization. So I want to give you an opportunity because I want to hear more about what you guys are doing and how you’ve built personalization into your offering and how you see that progressing going forward. If you can talk about it. Yeah.

Will Croushorn (22:42)
no, I can talk about at a high level. You know, one of the goals for me is how do you use these tools? I again it’s almost, you know, like a pain personally, how do you use these tools to create better human experiences or different experiences that just couldn’t exist before? and and for me, that’s in two specific areas. One is customers that have atypical needs. So, you know, if you pull up through a drive-thru.

It shouldn’t just work. It doesn’t matter if you stutter or you have Parkinson’s or your desk and you know you want to be able to sign. Like there’s no reason that you shouldn’t just be able to order and it’s an afterthought. It just works. That’s something that more and more of this technology is able to do and should be able to do if we go and, you know, if we build that. The other piece though, and one of the really fun parts of my journey so far was spending time at Disney Parks and watching, you know.

They’re master storytellers. A drive-thru is no different. There is, even though it’s only 30 or 40 seconds, there is a beginning, a middle, and an end. And you are feeling something. A lot of times it’s not great emotions that you’re feeling because, you know, drive-throughs are stressful. You know, you have kids screaming in the backseat. And so the the goal that we’ve asked ourselves is how do you turn this into an experience that customers go, I couldn’t get that anywhere else. That was really fun. I want to keep going back.

And so, you know, we’ve started to toy around, play around with, you know, Easter eggs. Can you say something and unlock content or can it be personalized to you? and sometimes that means offering something to you, but that also means sometimes taking things away and saying, hey, can we reduce the noise so that we you can focus on the things that matter to you? and so that level of serving customers in unique ways that’s never existed at this level before and be able to have that brand consistency.

across you know, hundreds of thousands of orders a day is incre

Zach Thompson (24:42)
Yeah, I mean that’s I’m I’m excited to see what you guys come up with. I mean, it is it’s really interesting to see how that’s all shifted. you know, speaking of shifting, as we move from, you know, kind of question and answer with Gen AI more towards agentich. We talked about some of those updates recently. Yeah, how how is maybe just give us a little bit more in terms of your personal workflow, how that’s changing using agentich. You talked about town and others, but any other examples about how that’s shifting for you?

Will Croushorn (25:07)
Yeah, I think, you know, it is most definitely shifting to I would go in even like two or three months ago, I would go to a chat and I would give it the context. maybe I’d put it in a project in Claude or Chat GPT. And then you’d scrape the whole thing out because after so much context, you know, it it’s it would just it would go off the rails and be like, let’s start clean again. you know, more and more now with

Dots with a chat GPT and OpenAI. You have, you know, Drockbot. It’s this concept of I have an agent and then I just say, hey, this is the thing that I’m trying to do. And it goes and spins up an entire team that is then able to go do all of those things. And it’s always on. You know, it’s working while you’re sleeping. I have an agent right now that’s going and building things for me. and so you know, I think it’s subtle, it’s almost like a different side of the same coin.

But that perspective of like, you’re the expert at going and doing this, go and do this for me, and very task based rather than just you know, conversation one on one, I think w we’re seeing that shift. And the other one is voice. Like, you know, I mentioned earlier, I’m calling my dot and saying, Hey, can you, you know, do this or this or I had this question be brainstorm with you.

Zach Thompson (26:25)
Yeah, it’s fascinating to see how it’s changing and it’s it’s just happening so quickly. so hard to keep up with. one of the things that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is we we’ve reached this crazy point with agentic we with this a lot of AI output. And, you know, people who have experience, they have expertise. they can judge the output, they can be objective about the output, they can be critical about the output from AI because of the expertise and the experience that they have. Yeah.

But students today, you know, undergrads, their three years of their four year experience, they’ve had AI, Gen AI at their disposal. So they could have been using it for you know creating content. but they don’t have that same experience, that same expertise to lean on. So any advice for students on or people that are interested in getting into marketing, what should they be doing to build those skills to be objective, to be critical?

Will Croushorn (27:20)
Yeah. You know, first and foremost, I’ll say I’m almost a little envious because, you know, they don’t have the baggage. We have to unlearn a lot of things. And so and a student that’s only ever known this approaches it, I assume they’re gonna approach it much differently in solving the problem than I would. And so much of our role now as we’re creating is, you know, you mentioned it’s the judgment, it’s the how do I get from A to Z? I see this even with as I’m working with engineers.

younger engineers are you know, they just assume the agents can do it. And if they can’t do it, they’re gonna do it in three months. And so the way that you’re building and prompting is different. With some of my more senior engineers, it’s you know, there’s a little bit of a learning curve of like, I’m okay giving it a task, but I don’t really trust it with the entire thing. And so having to go back to square one and relearn, wait, we can give it so much more, that’s difficult. So there’s there’s a benefit there of starting fresh. I think

Though where do you get experience? You said it earlier, you learn by doing. And so it is surrounding yourself with good people. You know, if you if you know, hey, this is my unique perspective on the world, and I’m really curious about marketing and, you know, rural Tennessee, or, you know, whatever your unique combination and experiences are in life. Find people who are also really good at that, just where you want to be. send them that LinkedIn message and say, Hey, I’d love to grab a cup of coffee. Can I pick your brand?

The other thing that I’ve seen though is, you know, you have Einstein in your pocket. I mentioned this earlier. I love I’ll I’ll just I’ll literally say, hey, teach me something new. And it just gets your brain going. Utilize that. If you don’t know about something, dive deep into it. Use it alongside. You know, read the book on it. th there’s a book that I current I I loved. It talked about it’s called The World Is Flat. And it was talking about the transition from like in, you know.

1990s into the internet age, nobody’s written that book for the world of AI. And so I said, what book do I read? That’s the equivalent. And it gave me four suggestions of here’s the four that make the equivalent. Okay, now I’m going to dig into that. So use it as an assistant to help you learn. And the last piece is use agents to check agents. So I have a governing agent. Its entire role in Grokbot.

is just to go through all of my other chats. And one, if I’ve used any new terminology, it’s helping make sure that, you know, everything, you said this here, you said it this way here, but they both in the same thing. and then also use it as a check against like, wait a minute, it’s overstating this over here. You should question this. Give it the permission to really push back and you know kind of be gnarly with that. And so I, you know, it’s surrounding yourself with the people you want to be like asking good questions with Einstein in your pocket.

And using agents to check agents. You know, you learn by doing those things. And, you know, it’s just like going to the gym, you build that muscle.

Zach Thompson (30:23)
Wow, tell me a little bit more about this grokbot. So you’re using this as an automated process, right? So any conversation that you’re having with other AI, it’s automatically monitoring those conversations and giving you feedback on.

Will Croushorn (30:33)
Yeah, I so one of the issues that I ran into really early on was, you know, actually we’ve had this for centuries now, or not centuries, but decades. Microsoft Word, how many versions that we go through where it’s like we have 15 different versions of the same document? That got improved a little bit with Google Docs. And so okay, now we’re all working out and you can see that revision history, but we still have 15 different documents, you know, that you’ve created or that I’ve created this spreadsheet over here.

How do you keep governance of everything is the same? and so recently I’ve set up the and the same thing happens with conversations in you know these in these platforms. And so I’ve set up agent, an agent whose entire goal is to help make sure that my documents and my conversations and all of my agents are completely up to date and on the same plane. And so as it finds discrepancies in terminology or, you know, hey, you use this stat here, did you mean to use that here?

it is bringing those to my attention. There’s some that I say, you know what, that’s a low level, like you have permission to update. Anytime you see this number, this number, just go ahead and fix it. Anytime you see my name spelled wrong, just go ahead and fix it. others send it to me an a in an email and prompt me and say, Hey, I need your eyes on this. It has been it’s been incredible.

Zach Thompson (31:54)
Wow. Anything that we haven’t talked about today that you feel like we need to cover?

Will Croushorn (31:59)
You know, I think for students, I would say there is so much opportunity. You know, I I again I’m reading this book on the invention of the computer. And in the very early days, computers are expensive, they were cumbersome, and everyone viewed them as a way to automate calculating. And they viewed it as a million dollar calculator that was just taking away jobs.

And now you fast forward and you look and you say, there’s such a limited view when you see smartphones and you know all the technology that is embedded in literally everything that we do, video games, et cetera. We don’t know where this next horizon is going. But the opportunity right now is we get to write that history. And so find the things that you’re curious about. Be really passionate about serving people and taking care of people and meeting those core needs.

Because if you’re curious and hungry and you’re serving people and meeting needs and you’re using these tools in ways that you know nobody’s ever thought of before, there’s so much opportunity to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. and it you know, it it’s all just laying there waiting for us to to go and invent and explore and and discover.

Zach Thompson (33:17)
That’s fantastic. Where can people find out more about you and the work you’re doing? Yeah.

Will Croushorn (33:21)
follow me on LinkedIn. is probably the best place. Will Croushorn you know, if you listen, would love to say hi. I myself, I I’m all these things that we talked about, like if you have a book that you say, Hey, I just read this, this is worth reading, here’s a podcast, or here’s the latest way that I am using AI or these tools, send it my way because I want to learn. Yeah, we’re it we’re all learning this stuff together, which is

Terrifying but also really cool.

Zach Thompson (33:52)
Yeah, and there’s no one that’s an expert yet, right? Like we’re all building this expertise. So Will, thanks so much for coming. I really appreciate it.

Will Croushorn (33:58)
Thank you. It’s been fun.

Zach Thompson (34:00)
Thank you, folks. If you enjoyed this episode, please tune in for further conversations. follow the podcast and share it with others. Thank you.