Curious how technology shapes nonprofits and small businesses? Brad Griffith states that technology, at its best, is a tool to enhance human connection, eliminate operational barriers, and level the playing field for all organizations. Regardless of size or resources.

We sit down with Brad Griffith, Founder and CEO of Buckeye Innovation, to explore the impact of technology on nonprofits, small businesses, and our daily lives. Brad shares his personal journey, growing up in an entrepreneurial family, learning the ropes of small business from his father’s veterinary practice, and eventually being inspired to start Buckeye Innovation to address gaps in resources and accessibility for mission-driven organizations.

We discuss the unique challenges that nonprofits face, particularly around funding and access to technology, and how Buckeye Innovation is working to support these organizations through web and mobile solutions. Brad talks about projects like the ConnectUs Coalition and their partnership with organizations such as Smart Columbus and the Columbus Metropolitan Library to provide digital skills training, close the digital divide, and create tools that genuinely enhance human connection and organizational effectiveness.

Brad provides valuable insights into how the perfect technology isn't about replacing human interaction It’s about freeing up time and capacity so people can focus on what truly matters. He discusses the importance of reflection and empathy in developing and deploying tech solutions, ensuring they align with users' needs, whether in nonprofits, small businesses, or community resources.

We also touch on the evolving workforce landscape, the role of AI, and the need for ongoing upskilling and adaptability. Brad offers practical advice on technology adoption, highlighting resources like public libraries, SCORE, and Accelerate Columbus, and stresses the value of human creativity, connection, and asking the right questions.

Whether you’re a nonprofit leader, small business owner, or just curious about tech’s role in creating more equitable opportunities, there’s something here for you.

If you like this episode, please let us know. We appreciate the feed back, and your support of offset costs of producing the podcast!

5 Frequently Asked Questions about Buckeye Innovation

1. What is Buckeye Innovation’s core mission? - Buckeye Innovation’s mission is to provide equitable access to the best web and mobile technology so organizations can grow their community impact.
2. How can technology enhance human connection in nonprofits and small businesses? - By automating tedious tasks and improving access to resources, technology frees up time and energy for organizations to focus on building relationships and serving people directly.
3. What are some key technology challenges for nonprofits and small businesses? - Many face limited resources, outdated systems, and gaps in digital skills—challenges that affect service delivery and organizational growth.
4. What local resources are available in Central Ohio to support digital equity? - Organizations like the Columbus Library, Accelerate Columbus, Smart Columbus, and the ConnectUs Coalition offer digital skills classes, device access, and tech support for both individuals and organizations.
5. How do you know if your technology is helping or hindering your mission? - Reflect on whether tech is breaking bottlenecks, increasing impact, and enhancing human connection—or if it’s creating obstacles or distractions from your core goals.

We would love to hear from you.

Give us your feedback, or suggest a topic, by leaving us a voice message.

Email us at [email protected].

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Please review our podcast on Google!

And of course, everything can be found on our website, Looking Forward Our Way.

Recorded in Studio C at 511 Studios. A production of Circle 270 Media® Podcast Consultants.

Copyright 2026 Carol Ventresca and Brett Johnson

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/

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Listener Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed by the experts interviewed on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the podcast hosts or any affiliated organizations. The information provided in these interviews is for general informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners are encouraged to consult with qualified professionals for specific advice or information related to their individual circumstances. The podcast host and producers do not endorse or guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any information provided by the experts interviewed. Listener discretion is advised.

We are Looking Forward Our Way. Hi, this is Brett. Technology has

become the backbone of our lives or the bane of our existence.

Today, we're going to discuss the many ways technology can and should

be utilized to make our lives better and organizations stronger.

Buckeye Innovation was created to provide software engineering and

designs for organizations and has grown to support many

mission-driven entities. Founder and CEO of Buckeye Innovation,

Brad Griffith, knew the value of technology and how it could create

high-impact solutions when accessibility gaps and funding issues

were erased. Let's welcome and thank Brad for joining us today. Thanks, Brad.

Appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah. It's so nice to meet

you. We've talked a little bit and

found out a lot of commonalities from

your work with the nonprofits. And so, This is

huge, just huge to talk about. Having been a director of a

nonprofit, it's a bite. It's a

lot. It's a tough time for nonprofit. I mean, it's always been more challenging than

when you've got lots of money available to you, but— Absolutely. Last couple of years

particularly. Oh yeah, absolutely. And our nonprofits in Central

Ohio, give a shout out to all of the nonprofits. They do a phenomenal job.

We're really, really lucky to have all the groups that we have,

but that we've lost Several. We have some prominent ones

recently. Yes. And so we're hoping that this information will

be of support to other nonprofits who are looking for some

solutions. So thank you again for joining us.

You know, Brad, your support of the small businesses and

nonprofits, it's critical.

Budget issues over and above, but it's just critical. But Buckeye

Innovation has been named to the

Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing

private companies. So you guys are doing a lot of work over there.

Right. We've grown a lot. Exactly. So you received the

Small Business Leader Award from the Columbus Chamber of Commerce for

your vision, purposeful growth, and commitment to

using business for the force of good. So congratulations on that.

Thank you. And congratulations For all of the work and all of your

team that's been leading to this. So tell us about

the career path that you took to get to this point. Sure. Yeah,

that's a good question. So my dad was a veterinarian. He ran a

veterinary practice in Dublin for 50 years. And so I

learned, you know, growing up, we would have to go help out at the hospital.

We got an opportunity to go help out at the animal hospital.

Opportunity. Opportunity. Yes. We got to. I mean, truly,

Yeah. Experiences for a lifetime. When you would go and I get

to hold a puppy, a newborn puppy, and rub it to make

sure that it was breathing and did well after helping out in an

exam room with an animal that couldn't walk. And my dad just did acupuncture on

it and it walks out of the exam room. Didn't always have

that miraculous sort of outcome, but

just incredible experiences we had as kids. But the tough

challenges of the privileged life that I grew up, On Christmas

Day, frequently we wouldn't get to open presents until 2 or 3 PM because we

were going to the hospital and taking emergencies, an animal that had swallowed

an ornament off the tree or the chicken bone or the turkey bone

at Thanksgiving dinner. So I learned about what it's like to work

in a small business and what resources you have. Growing up, I built my dad's

first website. My brother did some legal work after he had gone to law

school. You just, you use what resources you have available to you. And so

I learned that this is some of how— I'll tell you about the career path,

but also this is how I came to be inspired to start Buckeye Innovation.

There just are not the same resources for small businesses. Right. And as we're talking

about nonprofits, nonprofits also lack resources. Female and

minority-owned businesses, those that are started in Ohio versus

the Bay Area or Chicago or New York, there are lots of different reasons

that organizations may not have the same resources. I want to help build technology and

design that enables all businesses to have a fair chance,

to help more people because they have great technology and design. So

that's how I got my inspiration. I started— my career

path-wise, I started because my dad had a computer guy who'd come over and help

with the computers. My brother followed the computer repair guy around, and I

followed my brother around. And so that's how I picked up an interest for it.

And I was a gamer as a kid. My first job in high school, I

worked for an educational planning firm in Dublin that did facility plans. Wow.

enrollment projections, all sorts of services for

schools all around the state of Ohio and elsewhere, but a lot in

Ohio. And I built their first website. I did some projects

for them. They had a survey that they would mail out, actually put a

paper survey in the mail and people would fill it out on paper and mail

it back. Someone would transcribe that. They did put it into a spreadsheet

eventually, but it was just a very manual process and they weren't getting the response

rate they wanted. And so this is very early when I was, I don't think

I could even drive myself to work. I was maybe 15. And I

built a web application where someone could go fill the survey out, kind of like

SurveyMonkey or Google Forms before those were around. Right. And

it just helped dramatically with improving the efficiency of the process. And I saw those

opportunities. It was a small family-owned business. I saw what they

had available to them. And now we try and do that more with

nonprofits and local governments and things like that. So I came out of high school

inspired. I still wanted to be a doctor. I wanted

not to be a veterinarian because I saw how hard my dad worked and how

it wasn't quite as lucrative as human medicine. So I

decided to go into human medicine. I went to Ohio State University, studied electrical and

computer engineering pre-med, and then graduated

with my degree and worked at a product development firm. I dropped the pre-med

during college. Ooh. I had a moment in chemistry lab where I took my

goggles off. I feel like it would make a good movie scene. Took my goggles

off, turned off my Bunsen burner, went out into the hallway and called my now

wife and said, I can't do this any longer. This is my 3rd

chemistry class and I'm going to have a dozen more.

And I probably, I know I kind of scared her a little bit, although she

still married me. I said, I want to have kids and I want to be

there for my family. I think I tried not to say, with

you. Jump right into that. Been dating for a few months.

Sure. You're not gonna give her the link to this podcast, are you? No, I

will. She knows the story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so fast forward a little bit.

So I graduated, did some work in a product development firm, JPMorgan Chase

as well, worked for a couple of years, an internet startup, and then I started

my business and it's been 17 years now. So

kudos to your wife. For not running

away. For not running away. And the first job I had when I

was a graduate student at Ohio State was pre-med majors. Oh yeah. And

needless to say, you know, I saw very few of them the second year.

Right. Sure. It doesn't always last. No, not by any stretch of the imagination.

But what you were experiencing, even

though not that you

may have decided you didn't want to work with animals, that notion

of helping and of supporting the

families, whether it's a dog or a kid

in terms of helping the families. Those are

important kinds of things to learn as a young person. You had some

opportunities at 15 that my pre-vet

majors never got. Absolutely. And so it really

is, those were some wonderful opportunities that you had. We were just talking

earlier about how important mentoring is and

experiencing a professional, situation

well before you're making a decision. I was very fortunate to

have the opportunities that I did, you know, living in an entrepreneurial family. And, and

the other thing too that kind of came out that I was thinking as you

were talking, um, that nonprofits don't

necessarily have a lot of resources. Small businesses don't have a lot of

resources. Oftentimes the resources are there, they don't know where to go.

They don't know what questions to ask. And who can help

them get to the point of getting those resources. Absolutely. So, again, we're

really glad you're with us today, and we're hoping that this is going to lead

to some other organizations getting your help. I hope there are listeners who

work with nonprofits, who volunteer, who are on boards, who may have

some influence, maybe those who have started nonprofits or started a small business.

If my company's mission, our mission is that all businesses and organizations have

equitable access to the best web and mobile technology, to grow their

impact on the community. So if we do our work appropriately,

then businesses and organizations, they not only are the resources there, they

know they're there. And we're a part of that. But I think there's a great

ecosystem that hopefully we can talk about in Columbus for

supporting nonprofits and growing businesses. Exactly. Thank you. Well, if you could

describe that perfect tech, what would that goal be? What would it

accomplish? I mean, how would it make our lives better? The perfect tech.

Is there such a thing as the perfect tech? Well, that's supposed to be sci-fi.

It says we are going to have it sometime. Right, right. Exactly. Well,

so a lot of ways that you could look at what makes for the perfect

technology. I think I've got 2 daughters,

tween, teenage daughters. And I

think about what do I want for them in their lives? I want great human

connection. I want them to not be stuck on screens. As

people who are raising kids these days, they have the opportunity to just use that

Digital babysitter. Give them an iPad and then you don't have

to parent as much. And don't get me wrong, there are times that we do

that anyway. I just need a break. It's been a long day. Just need you

to watch something for a little while. And we had it as kids as well.

Maybe it was watching some TV at home.

Mm-hmm. So for me, the perfect tech is something that

enhances human connection and gives us more time

for those human aspects of life and it

automates and systematizes it. It reduces the amount of

other work, the tedious work that we don't really want to do as much of.

It should enhance my human creativity, should be a great thought partner and

enable me to do more, take whatever my superpower might be as a human

and do more of that and enhance that, help me reach a greater potential.

It should not replace the human connection. Mm-hmm. So, in

my opinion, that's the perfect technology. We try to do that. I know that as

we build software, sometimes— I had an instance earlier today. I

was at a nonprofit in New Albany, and we were demoing some new software I

just volunteered and built for them. And one person

said, oh, are we moving this to a digital process? That's great. My

last job before retirement, I worked on tablets. I put

all the things in the clinic, we'd put them all into a tablet. And the

other person there looked at the tablet, scoffed, and

walked the other direction. So, you get different reactions.

She lightened, like, you saw a glow in her eye

later. Like, she, it was not, it was just a long day. Mm-hmm. But so,

we wanna enhance the human connection. We don't wanna say the things that you love

doing that brighten your life, you know, when my developer, I had

a developer say to me, when I'm using AI for building software, I don't enjoy

it as much. Interesting. I said, that is something to listen to. Wow. Yeah.

Absolutely. We need to watch it. And it's not a, that's the end of the

story. We need to figure out why is it that you enjoy it less?

Is there a mindset shift about it? Are there parts that maybe you're not using

it the way that you could be using it? So anyway, there's a lot to

that perfect technology, but it's something that in my mind, it

frees us up to spend more time on human connection and the things

that enrich life. It does not replace those things for us.

That comment is really telling because I always

think of a programmer, a computer geeky guy,

loves the creation part of what he's doing, he or

she is doing. So although that's not a human

connection, that's a connection to the

product that they are creating that they no longer have.

So that's interesting. It is. Yeah, it is very interesting. Are we still creating

software? If I'm using a prompt, I'm telling an AI agent to

create something for me, and then I see what it creates and I

ask it to make changes. Am I still creating the software? Should I be saying

to my coworker, I am working on this feature or I'm building this, or should

I say I'm asking Claude to build? Right, right. It's murky. It's

kind of weird. It is. But, you know, and I say this

all the time and people probably think I'm a little crazy or repetitive,

We baby boomers built technology. We built the internet. We could still

do it. We've probably forgotten more than some of you know. Absolutely.

But it's changed and it will continue to change and it will

continue to grow, maybe not enhance, but it will continue to

grow. So there are steps that we

all need to take when we're doing technology that, as

you said, make the world better, and

more complete. And that may or may not need a little bit of

shifting of attitudes, ideas,

ownership. Right, right. Absolutely. Not good, not

bad, just change. I think some reflection on how

you're using technology, 'cause even the same device, have you seen

Apple Vision Pro? It's like a VR headset. They call

it, Oh, what is the— they've got a

term for it that's a unique Apple term. Anyway, I mean,

you can be immersed in an environment. I wore my Apple Vision

Pro on a ski slope one time as an experiment to see. It's so

low latency, the video, it's like you don't have it on.

I can snowboard down the hill with the Vision Pro on. It works fine.

Wow. I demonstrated it when a talk I was giving one time and had someone

throw me something from the back of the room and you can catch it with

the Vision Pro on. Wow. Amazing device. Very high

resolution. But it's a fascinating

experiment. Did either of you see Google Glass many years

ago? Yes. Right. Google Glass, it was basically a lens

frame without the actual lenses on it. It had a little prism, a

device, and people would wear them and

just be total social outcasts. It's very— I mean,

I'm sure you've seen if someone holds a phone up in your face to record

you, there's a feeling there. So wearing this device anyway, it

can be, for me, I feel like I'm just in the room and I'm just

here. I see what's going on. Maybe I've got some other digital things going on

there. But for you looking at me with this device on, it is going to

totally crush your willingness to connect with me. Sure. Right. And so

I feel like I learned a lot from using that device at home that I

felt normal, but the people around me didn't and didn't want to interact with me.

And And you can see the same thing with, there are

Snapchat Spectacles that have a camera in them or

the Meta glasses, Meta Ray-Ban glasses.

To me, I feel very normal, but someone who knows what I'm wearing, they know

there's a camera on there. And so they may wonder, are they being recorded? So

anyway, it's just always processing for me and for the other people

around me, is this technology enhancing our connection? Right. that

webcam where I'm able to talk to my 93-year-old grandma across

the country where I wouldn't have been able to do that years ago, and that's

enhancing the connection? Or is it the device that I'm looking at

instead of interacting with my daughter at night? I don't know, same

device. But we went through those changes when

Zoom exploded during COVID and

suddenly everybody realized they couldn't wear their pajamas when they were

talking to their boss on a Zoom call. And

even when cell phones really

exploded in use, people would

shy away. When laptops suddenly had

cameras all the time, people were shying away.

So yeah, it really does impact human connection unless

you work for that. Right. So I remember in college—

have you been in a college? I don't know if you've given guest lectures or

anything. You've gone and talked in a college classroom. Have you seen what they look

like these days? No. The students, every student has a laptop,

which makes sense. I mean, even in some K-12 classrooms, every student's got a

tablet or laptop. I remember being the only student in my lectures,

even in an engineering program, dating me a little bit, but I was

the only student with a computer on my desk and it felt a

little bit awkward. And I'm sure some of the professors said, what is he doing?

Why is he not paying attention in my class? Right. So I don't know.

Hopefully it's Some of the listeners think, how am I using

technology? And if you really spend the time reflecting, is it enhancing my connection

with other people? What about for those other people? Can I put myself in their

shoes? And this is as we look at nonprofit clients,

they need to be thinking about that as well. The Columbus Library, are they using

technology in a way that is enhancing their connection with people? And it's

doing workforce development training. It's helping nonprofits in their

nonprofit and business resource center. Yeah. They're teaching classes to people. Is the

technology enhancing those connections and the value of what they're doing, or

does it get in the way? Is it a distraction? So it's really 2

questions we need to be asking, not just the one. It's not just,

is this enhancing our work or our life? It's,

what is it doing to the person who's in the room with us? Yeah. Good

point. Good point. You got to have some empathy in it though. You got to

really try and put yourself in the other person's shoes.

Absolutely. So we have been discussing really equitable

access to technology for these organizations, how it can enable

that organization or an individual to take innovative steps

to reach success. How does Buckeye Innovation

support clients? And can you share a story about a client

whose organization changed because the right technology

removed barriers for the staff and enhanced the client's

experience? Sure, absolutely. I'll tell you about something that we're working on right now,

and I can maybe tell you about some past projects, some of our favorite projects.

Great. We do try— what we're trying to do is we're trying to

enhance the capacity of those organizations. So for an organization that is

changing people's lives, for Goodwill Columbus, they do a lot of great things with

residential services and workforce development. They are trying to

change people's lives, and we want to give them the technology tools that

enhance that ability. So we build web apps, a

web application, something that you would open up in a browser in Chrome

or Edge, that also work on mobile devices. We also build

mobile apps, something you download from the App Store. And those apps,

typically it is helping to automate some business process.

It is— a lot of people have different preferences about how you want

customer service, but at the library, They have live chat on their website if you

just want to send them a message. They have a lot of information that's

available self-service on the website. Some people prefer to come in person and

talk with someone. At times, there's— you might want a kiosk in

person so that— some people don't like ordering food from their kiosk,

but that's an option. So what we try to do is we provide technology,

various different technology options that enable people to

get services or for the organization to deliver services in different ways that meet

different needs. Yeah. And we need a very diverse team for that. So we try

to recruit from diverse sources. I'm not recruiting all

Ohio State engineers. We're trying to get people who have different

backgrounds, different skill sets, because that enables us to help solve those

problems in different ways, have empathy. I might say, well, this technology is

so cool. I would use this every day. But the person who our client

actually needs to be using the technology, it might not really

enhance their lives. It might not be the way they want to interact. So a

couple of examples. One, I don't know if you've heard of the ConnectUs Coalition.

It was previously the Franklin County Digital Equity Coalition. That's a little bit long.

So ConnectUs Coalition is trying to connect Central Ohio residents.

Some of the statistics are pretty amazing at how many people lack broadband

internet access, even in Columbus. Right. Or in the pandemic, if you have

2 working parents with 4 kids and they only have 2 computers at

home, 2 computers used to be plenty. That's what maybe one more

than you, one or two more than you needed, but then you had

distance learning for the kids and everyone needs a device. There's a lack

of devices, a lack of broadband internet, and a lack of digital

skills in some communities, even in Central Ohio. And it's

unfortunately largely on racial bounds or

socioeconomic bounds. So we need to make sure that people have access

to skills. So the ConnectUs Coalition, it's a partnership

where Smart Columbus, that's part of the Columbus Partnership, They

lead it. The Columbus Library, Goodwill Columbus, Jewish Family

Services, quite a few other organizations in town all contribute to try to

make sure that device access, broadband access, and digital skills are available to

everyone. We built a portal. We worked with them to build a portal that

makes it very easy because if you lack digital skills, going

online to sign up for a digital skills class is a chicken and egg problem.

Right. How do you sign up if you don't know how to use the device

in the first place? So we've made it very, very easy to sign up. They're

nearing 5,000 people who have gone through these digital skills classes now,

just over the last couple of years. Good. So, it improves the process

both for the student. Again, we need to be thinking about people who have different

life experiences than we do. It improves the experience for the student signing up.

We've tried to make it very easy to sign up and get qualified for that.

We also have to check because if they meet certain income,

they're under a certain income, they receive a free device at the end of this

digital skills class. So we go through that process, make it very easy for them,

but also for those who are teaching the classes. Columbus State Community College is

another one of the partners. When all of these different partners are teaching the classes,

they need something to manage their roster, make sure that someone is

on the roster, they're signed up, they have a device assigned to them, they haven't

also gotten 2 or 3 other devices at other classes. So

that's one app that we've really enjoyed building, that portal. If

anyone's interested, anyone's listening who needs Those individuals, it's great

for seniors who wanna learn additional digital skills, for

anyone who just may not have had access to those devices or may not have

grown up with them. connectcentralohio.com

is that website where you can sign up for those classes. They have those

cohorts going on all around Central Ohio.

So that'd be one example of a great client that we've really enjoyed working with.

Good, good. I can remember at Employment for Seniors,

we were helping people 50 and over find jobs. So this was, I took over

in 2009. Cell phones were definitely

being used, but nobody thought a senior had any clue what

texting was. And I was sitting in my office one day and I

looked out and there were, we had 3 counselors working with

3 different clients. All 3 of them were sitting there on their

phone, checking the job board that we had.

Really? Applying for jobs. Connecting their resume and

they're doing it on their cell phone. And this was back in probably

2010, '11, '12, that time period. Yeah, that's early.

It was. And that's where people who have

access, who know how to get what they need, the resources

they need, and the devices can do it. The

broadband issue has been around for a long time. Absolutely, it has.

When COVID started, a friend of mine was teaching at one of the

colleges and her student lived outside of

Columbus. So there was no broadband,

no Wi-Fi, nothing. He literally had to climb a

tree to catch some neighbor's

Wi-Fi so that he could participate in his classes. Get

line of sight. You could probably see in the window too. Right, exactly.

Exactly. Wow. Yeah. You shouldn't have to go to those lengths. No. Especially in the

middle of winter. Yeah. But broadband has been an

issue in Columbus. How are we doing? Do you know?

We're doing well. There's still a gap there. We did

some work. One of the initial projects we did with the Franklin County Digital Equity

Coalition, its previous name, was doing speed tests and helping to

allow people to run a speed test and then show them some of the

options for internet service providers around. So I think there's still some

pretty major gaps. Again, I'm very proud of the Columbus Library. They

provide internet access at 29 branches around Central

Ohio. I'm sorry, 23 branches around Central Ohio.

So that's very helpful. You can get Wi-Fi in the parking lots. You can reserve

meeting rooms. Right. That's a great resource. I think we've seen a

lot of other, I mean, as you see internet cafes or even Starbucks

and lots of restaurants have them. I'll go to Panera sometimes.

So we're seeing some improvement, but there's still, some dead zones, some

areas that don't have the level of broadband that others do.

And I think as you start getting outside of those urban areas, when

you get to Licking County in Central Ohio, any

area that is not as densely populated, it's not as cost-effective to

run fiber optic cables there. Right. And so I think we're

still seeing a pretty big gap, but they're making progress.

Digital skills, I know we've got some really good numbers on How many digital skills

classes they're teaching. And that has shown a lot of progress. They're hitting their goals

on teaching those skills. Fabulous. Oh, wonderful. Yeah. Often an organization

loses sight of where it's headed. You've said technology should support

an organization's mission, not become the obstacle. How do you know

when technology is actually helping individuals and not getting in the way of it?

And how do you help them get back on track if they're on the wrong

path? Absolutely. Yeah, so a lot of reflection, I think, as we were talking

about reflecting on how you're using the technology, that's important.

I try not to lead with technology. I went back to— I don't think I

shared this with my story, but I studied electrical and computer

engineering undergrad. I went back for an MBA because I think my digital

skills, my engineering skills are very useful,

but I want to use them to solve real-world problems. And I think that's what

business school really helped me with. And so to answer the

question about how do you know when it's getting in the way or it's being

helpful? I think you have to really think about what are the human

challenges and the process challenges, trying to

understand what drives profitability for an

organization or impact. For a nonprofit, you still need

profit. You actually have to have net income in a nonprofit

to sustain yourself. You cannot always operate at a deficit. Right. So

trying to analyze the business, and I'll frequently ask clients,

this might be an exercise that someone could do if they're volunteering with an organization

or running an organization, thinking about

to grow to 10 times your size, 10 times your current impact. If

you're, say you're serving a community and you can work with 1,000

people a year, what would it take to serve 10,000 people a year? And

generally they'll throw up their hands and say, oh, there's no way. There's no

way we could scale to that level. And I say, well, you're probably right. Tell

me why. What are the obstacles there? And they'll say, well, this has got to

change. We need staff. We need money. I had a call yesterday with a

great nonprofit organization in Central Ohio where he said, well, I'm trying not to say

money when you ask me that problem. So that's okay. To avoid saying money, what

would that money buy you? What would you spend the money on? And then we

analyze where are the bottlenecks in the process. So a

fairly direct answer to that question is, if you can understand,

really think through what are the bottlenecks in our process of serving people

to serve them more thoroughly, serve more people, And then

is the technology eliminating bottlenecks? Is it

making those problems much smaller? If

it's not, it's not serving you well. And then also you can just, the exercise

we talked about before, is it enhancing my human connection with someone

in the library? Is the use of technology driving more people in the

door because they know about the hours and they know about closures, they know the

services that are available? And so that technology then is

encouraging people to go use the library or find their closest library.

Or I built a tool that the library hasn't adopted yet. I'm hopeful that they

will. Have you reserved a meeting room at the library ever? Yes. Yes. And so

they've got great study rooms and meeting rooms, but

it's not super friendly to reserve one. Westerville Library

isn't either. So find out from them. Westerville joined the

Columbus Library. Yes. Finally. Yes. And so I think it's on there now. Good. I

built a tool where I can say, well, I'm downtown or I'm in

Dublin. I need a study room from this time to this time.

find me the closest study room. And it will not just look at one library,

it'll check all of the libraries in the area and say, well, there are 3

rooms available here and 2 here. 'Cause right now it's isolated

in regards to what rooms you have to be at that library. Yes. And

it's color-coded, but it doesn't tell you what the colors mean.

So you don't know if it's open or not. Yeah, true, true. No, yeah,

that makes sense. Yeah. But if, I mean, if the

technology is just eliminating my human connection, I'm only interacting

online and I never go into the library because that's a, a problem. Or

BESA is one of our clients. They do volunteer management and civic

engagement. Wonderful organization. Amazing organization doing very important work.

They've seen a lot of growth over the last several years despite funding cuts or

a lot of funding challenges for organizations. But

if BESA said, let's build a technology platform, I said, fantastic. I'm going to

build a way that people can just volunteer online and they never need to

come to the Mid-Ohio Food Collective. That's not a good

idea. We need that technology to be scaling up their

organization and making sure that more people know about the volunteer

opportunities, making it easy to register people in bulk. So you

could register several team members or your family. We need to

be building tools that drive more human connection and enhance

that, eliminate the bottlenecks in an organization, not technology

for technology's sake. And all of— Everything you're saying is

appropriate for private industry, small businesses. Absolutely. I mean,

somebody can sell as many widgets as they want to, but if they're not really

connecting with their employer or with their clients, those clients are

going to go someplace else to buy those widgets. Yeah. Yep,

for sure. So, very good. We don't tend to build tools that fully automate

our customer service process. We have a support pod, team members who are

dedicated to answering support tickets that come in. any sort of request from a

client. We want to use the technology to

make that experience better for customers. We have a portal that all of our

customers can look at to see how their website's performing, the uptime of

their website, when was the last outage. Most web developers never want to tell you

that there's an outage on your website. The reality is that websites go down.

That happens. Mm-hmm. It's generally very briefly, or there are

some websites that just have 100% uptime. We want to maintain a

lot of transparency. We try and use technology tools with our clients to

enhance our connection with them, to make the process more efficient, but not to

eliminate the human connection. We still provide humans that will reach out to

clients and can talk them through issues. Okay.

All right. When we talk about technology access,

many people think we're just talking about cell

phones and laptops. Is that correct, or

is it really a bigger tech picture that we should

understand? Is it more critical for

organizations and not for others, or are we

all in the same boat together? Boy, great question.

There are a lot of kinds of technology. I know I'm not—

I left it when I showered this morning. I left my band, so

I've got a Yeah, so you've got one as well. I have a new Fitbit

Air. I was just going to say, this is a new Fitbit because I killed

the last one. Oh yeah, got it. So I decided, I recently

self-diagnosed with adult ADHD. Anyone who knows me knows I

clearly have ADHD. I've got a lot of things going on, lots of apps that

I'm building. So I downgraded essentially from a

smartwatch to just a band that has no display. So

the relevance is that I think that there are a lot of different

devices. It's not purely about phones and computers. There is a

big access gap with phones and computers, as we talked about, households that maybe don't

have devices for every student, and their district may not have the

money to pay for those. That is a gap for sure.

So I think focusing on that is a good idea to say, do they have

a good cell phone? The cell phones we have today, they're more

powerful than the computers that we had 5 years ago. Oh, yeah.

So I do think that those are a big part of it. But when you

start looking at devices that will track steps and health, and

I've got an AI health coach now that is encouraging me to do stretches

or different types of cardio activity, and it's monitoring my heart rate, that has an

impact on my health. It's not fair that

I've got access to that and other people don't. So I think that those sort

of gaps are really important for us to think about as well.

And then you look at transportation. That's a big

issue that I neglected for many years, just assuming

every family, when their kids get to be 16, they've got a

car that they can go drive to their job. And the parents, each

parent has a car and it's just not a big deal to get to work.

That is not the case. I have employees who share cars and it's much more

environmentally friendly. I think it's fantastic that they're sharing a

vehicle in the family. but the access to transportation

is not there. So a little different kind of technology. I think we need to

be considering a lot of different things, not just the phone and computer,

the wearables, the transportation technology,

thinking about what you have in your home. We have smart homes that may save

energy. You might have garage door openers

and speaker systems and Alexa devices, or I hope I didn't

trigger Alexa for anyone listening, or a Google Home device.

There are a lot of other devices that I think can enhance or

could be bad for human connection. But yeah,

I think it goes well beyond that. And saying that it's bad for

human connection, when you think about all of the stuff that we could be doing

on a computer, phone, laptop, whatever, one of the

greatest issues and challenges we have in this country is isolation. For sure,

yeah. And if somebody, whether it's a child or an older person, is sitting

And the only connection they have is a television or

a computer or a phone, maybe not even a cell

phone, but a landline. Those are

issues. Yeah. Sometimes those might be better than

having nothing or having a picture frame in my grandma's

house where she could see it automatically would load photos of all the grandchildren. I

feel like that enhances connection. And then my mom,

my grandma passed away just a few years ago. My mom was able to talk

to her every day across the country because of the ease

of use of an Alexa device. Hmm. Not everyone has that in their home,

but an Echo Show, not to promote any particular products, but having

a device where you can live chat with your family and it's

sitting there and you can just say, hey,

call Gail, call my mom. That is amazing and

enhances human connection. So I think that those things can help with loneliness.

But sure, if you use a device and it blocks your connection, it's your

only source of connection, that's a problem. If I could also address with

another area, I think, of equitable access to technology, when we're talking about

nonprofit organizations, many nonprofits

have a website now, but that is still a gap that some of them don't

know how to maintain it. They don't have the access. We've been working with quite

a few nonprofits who have very outdated databases now that have been

around 20 years, and now no one's willing to

support it. And then they need to figure out, what do I do next? How

do we migrate this over somewhere else? Those sort of data systems, even those

are somewhat privileged nonprofits that they have a data system like that. A

lot are still operating on paper or spreadsheets or more antiquated systems.

Mm-hmm. And then imagine if that's the nonprofit in your community that doesn't have

great technology for staying organized and delivering better services.

you're not going to have as good of access as someone who lives in a

more affluent community where they do have all that technology and those resources. So I

think looking at those business and nonprofit resources for web

apps, mobile apps, something that can help improve the

service delivery, that's another really big gap that affects us.

We've talked mostly about nonprofits. When you're talking to your private

industry clients, are you seeing the same level of

issues, or is private industry more attuned to using

technology? Great question. I think

a lot of people view nonprofit and local government, I would,

they're a different type of nonprofit really, but I would group them in there,

view them as outdated. They don't tend to have very good

technology, limited resources. Small businesses, I

do think, fall into that bucket as well, are very similar when you're getting

started. And it's not just about the size of the business,

the amount of revenue or the number of employees. I think it's also about

the experience. My dad was an entrepreneur. My mom and dad ran the

veterinary practice. My grandpa was an entrepreneur and ran a

manufacturing company, a clothing manufacturing company. My aunt and uncle have a toy

store out in Salt Lake City. I have examples. One of my

sisters runs her own legal practice. I have examples of entrepreneurs in my

family. My dad went to college. My siblings all went

to college. My mom went to college. My grandpa went to college. My grandma. I've

got those examples. So I think that there are some things that cause these

big gaps for small businesses, that if I didn't have

entrepreneurs in my family, I didn't have the same resources as someone else, those

cause some really big gaps, and the technology adoption gap is there as well.

It's pretty similar. Well, and sometimes small businesses just really are

reflective of somebody has a hobby that they've decided to make money

on, or an idea, and

it's Whether they even have the resources and experience,

like having an entrepreneurial family, they

didn't think it was going this way. And suddenly now

they're to the point of like, if I don't get some technology, I'm in trouble.

Right. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Are you a fan of E-Myth? Have you read that book?

No. Or E-Myth Revisited? It's about the entrepreneurial myth, but it's just the

letter E, myth. And it talks about just this thing you're talking about.

It's a story of a woman I think it's a fable, a fake story, but

it talks about a woman who baked pies with her grandma when she was a

kid. And she just loved that. And the nostalgia of baking a pie with her

grandmother drove her to want to do that. She said, I'm going to start a

pie baking business because I just love these memories of baking

pies with my grandma. And then can you imagine

what is involved other than baking pies in running a pie business? Oh.

Lots of things. And so it talks about the different roles that are involved.

There is the There's a technical role to be played, but there's also

a managerial role and a leader, like a visionary leader

role. And so you may not know that getting into business. You say, I've

got this really good idea. I love baking pies. I love gardening, so I'm going

to start up a gardening business. There's so much more to it of payroll

and accounting. And yeah, that— so I think a lot of small businesses

face those same challenges. We work with Accelerate Columbus. It's funded by the

city of Columbus, a program for small businesses. Located in the

city, and the city of Columbus pays for it

to allow us to work with those small businesses and nonprofits this year, started

funding some nonprofits. We provide free services to the

nonprofit or to the small business to help them build their own website and learn

how to maintain their website. And there are programs around sales

consulting and leadership consulting, accounting,

marketing, video production, all of these service providers who are dedicating

some time towards small businesses. in the community. So to your point,

I think if we, if we don't know about those resources,

that's pretty much as bad as there not being resources. You don't know what you

don't know, right? Yeah. Accelerate Columbus is a great program that is helping,

helping those small businesses.

Yeah. Technology initiatives can solve real-world problems. Medical

breakthroughs and agricultural progress exploded over several decades.

You've been collaborating with several local organizations such as Smart

Columbus to focus in on specific issues and devise

innovative solutions. What tech, what can

tech do for us today? I mean, can you give us some examples? Yeah,

I mean, there are so many things. Another recent client, we have a new

partnership with the Columbus Foundation. So we talk about the

ecosystem, the infrastructure we have in place to support nonprofits. The Columbus

Foundation is one of the best at helping to make sure we have financial

resources, and that we're connecting our nonprofits with good service

providers. And so they brought us in through their Center for Change Management to

work with some nonprofits around Central Ohio. And the Community Refugee and

Immigration Services, Chris? Mm-hmm. It's an organization that has been

unfortunately busy, very, very busy, that there's

such an increased need. And as temporary protected status

gets in, it is wrapped up for various different

countries over time, they're discontinuing it. the influx of

intake is just more than they're able to handle. So the foundation asked us

to work with Chris to help them figure out what is the bottleneck, back to

the bottlenecks, what is the bottleneck in their process, and could we

strategically apply some technology that would help them? And we

went to Chris's office over on Henderson Road, Old

Henderson Road, and we talked with them about their process and

figured out that the intake was really that bottleneck. It

wasn't as much Processing the cases. They have a case management

system that's pretty good. It was the intake. How do we— when someone comes to

us, they need to fill out some paperwork. We need to determine what exactly they

need, and we need to get them into our systems. And so we built some

technologies, getting at some of the technology that's available. Integrations between

systems, I think that's something that is neglected. It's usually, do I have

the right software? And if not, I'm going to switch software. And oh,

I need 2 pieces. I need 3 pieces of software, but they don't talk to

each other. We're doing a lot of integrations to help those systems talk to each

other. And there are lots of

technicalities about the way that we do that. I think having volunteers

who can help identify, or in small businesses, team members who can help

identify those bottlenecks, that's really important. But then

knowing about knowing the resource, knowing that there is a way to

connect systems together, there are APIs and there are MCP

servers and there are all these different things technologies that can enable you to connect

things together. Um, have you, have you all used with, uh, with Claude or

with ChatGPT connectors?

I've not done connectors, but I know of them.

I've heard people saying, yeah, this, this, and this, and this. Sure. Wow. It's,

it's pretty amazing how, um, you know, for instance, I, I was

working in Asana, our project management system, and creating tasks for

a product that we've built. And I had a customer text me

some questions and I texted back, oh yeah, here's what I think we ought to

do about that. Here's how we should build that feature. I said, oh, but I'm

going to need to keep track of these. And I went to Claude and I

asked Claude, which is my preferred AI agent for most things.

I just copied and pasted the text from the text message. I said, create

tickets for these, like a task in our project management system, Asana, from

these. And it connects and it creates those automatically. I can now

go to Claude Code, the tool for building software, and say, Claude

Code, go to Asana, find my highest priority tasks,

and work on them. And for each one, I want you to give me a

branch of the code that fixes that or implements the feature, and then

let me know when it's done. And then I can go test it and refine

it. So those sort of connectors, I think, are something that everyone should consider.

AI, I actually just had an interview with 10TV, and we

talked about AI and how every school district in Ohio is now

required required by July 1st of this year, already in the past, required to

have an AI policy. They passed that in the 2025

budget for the state. And so we were talking about AI, whether you're

pro-AI or anti-AI, AI is here and it's around. We need to figure out

how do we deal with it in an environmentally sustainable way, in a safe

way. We need to teach our kids about it, teach adults about it.

So I encourage people to understand what's possible and how do you make it work

well for you. Right. And those connectors, I think, are something that's really pretty

powerful. Well, you're not dropping the ball with something. It's like, what did we talk

about again? It's like you copy-pasted, boom, it's done. And the client is gonna be

happy because you listened and everything got done and you didn't

have to remember, what was that piece? And it was 3 days ago, you know,

'cause we're moving so fast. You know, on that memory side, so Facebook's been hitting

me with a lot of ads for a device called Fieldy recently. I haven't bought

that one, but there are other ones. Do you have any voice recorders? that you

use? Other than, no, just on my phone. With the podcast, I mean,

you're recording and then you can probably use some AI to analyze it. Oh yeah,

yeah. I have a device called Pocket. I have another one that's called Bee,

B-E-E, that are voice recorders. One is a wristband

that I can just press a button, that's single purpose. I just record audio with

it. I can press a button and say, remember to pick up milk, or

press the button, add to Zip sign

up a feature for bulk edit. And I can just dictate to it something that

I need to remember later. It processes all of that and

gives me AI summary and action items at the end of the day.

And there are a lot of these different devices. You can even use your phone.

There are plenty of apps where you could do that. But I would encourage listeners

to consider that sort of a device. To me, it's the next step.

If you haven't tried Alexa devices in your home or Google Home or the

Siri HomeKit, there are a lot of different options. Those voice

services, I think, are really powerful. So that would be something to try.

You've got to be comfortable with it listening. So there's always that caveat.

If you're not comfortable with it listening, you can turn the microphone off. But

we can speak and provide input much faster than we can type

or give input another way. So speaking to ask for something

is much faster. And then when it gives you the input back, depending on the

type of output, I'm sorry, that's giving you back, it might be good

to see it on a screen or for it to speak it back to you.

Yeah. That's a really cool technology. But this, as you're talking about remembering

things, having a voice recorder that can just take notes for you. I

haven't adopted Fieldy because it's an always-on device. It's listening

to you constantly. And I told my wife, I need this. This would be my

artificial memory. I would never forget anything. And she said, please do not

bring that device into the house. I was going to say 90% of what I

say, I would not want recorded. I was going to say the phone's really already

hearing it anyway to a certain degree. You're just not telling it to turn on.

Yeah. So, Brett, what— I'm amazed

about this because I'm a famous note-taker, you know, because

I'll forget. Absolutely. I'll forget stuff. How does that

come to you at the end of the day? Are you getting

bombarded by all of these things that are telling you, oh, you got to do

this and you got to do that? And, you know, that is possible.

Oh, there you go. This app drift, this creep where you just end up with

an app for everything and too many notifications. Yes,

that does happen to me. And sometimes it feeds my ADHD

in a way that I should not allow. That's why I switched from the smartwatch

to just a band with no screen. So you got to be careful. And I

think if you very intentionally plan and you decide which AI

agent am I going to use and you get everything funneling back into that one,

or if you say, I'm not going to use an AI agent, I'm going to

use a notes doc. I'm going to use Google Keep or

Google Docs or in my email. Mm-hmm. I mean, and the same is

true without the high-tech component. If you have a bunch of

notes, my dad— Sticky pad, sticky

notes everywhere. Right, sticky notes everywhere. My mom still, she keeps a few of them

when she finds them, but legal pads. My dad had so many ideas.

I remind myself of him frequently, had so many ideas and

was constantly jotting things down on notepads. And then

he wouldn't keep one notepad. He'd have notepads all over the place. And so she

surprised him. Well, it's gotta be convenient for when the idea strikes. You can write

it down. When it strikes. Yeah. It's like having the thing right next to your

bed. You get the idea. You need to have the pad there, right?

So it's like that. I mean, if you have all these apps, it's the same

as my dad years ago having legal pads all over the place that he would

take notes on. Now they're all over the place. So I think

having, thinking about what is my one place

that I'm gonna keep things, that is very helpful, whether it's technology or not.

Well, I used to do a notes app on my

phone and for whatever reason, the notes app died away.

And so I lost all of my notes, which was not, Pleasant.

But as I mentioned, I just got my new Fitbit. And

right away, it had assumed I wanted it to watch my

texts and this and that and my Ring doorbell and everything.

So I'm getting buzzed on my wrist by this thing and

getting buzzed in my phone at the same time, giving me the same message. And

I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. It could be too much. It goes

one place. No. Yes. Yeah. I mean, having no

backup, that's something we deal with a lot with organizations as well.

It can be tough in your life if you— Right. Oh, I know I wrote

this down somewhere, right? Where did I put— I mean, my wristband that

records. I know I put it in a drawer where I

thought, oh, I'm not going to forget it because it's going to be right— I

forgot which drawer I put it. So I need the watch to tell me where

I put it. So I think— but businesses run into this too, where they don't

have a backup system or they've used that same software for 20 years. And we

can be, we have for a lot of our clients been that

consistency that between leaders and their business or employees,

we provide consistency, help them document processes and ensure that

if something happens, we've got backups and we've got another way they can

do business. That I think the same applies for a person as it does for

a business or a nonprofit, knowing which one system of record you're going to use

instead of having all these different systems. And make sure if you pick

one system that you've got good backups and you've got a plan for if that

system goes down. Exactly. I mean, because tech doesn't always work.

Doesn't always work. And it doesn't always— it does not always turn on.

So, okay, I'm going to go talk about something

different. Sure. I'm always looking for solutions for job seekers,

particularly older individuals who are still in need of employment.

Moving forward, How is tech going to

improve the economic picture of our community,

train job seekers for new opportunities, develop

support systems needed for special populations? That's a

great question. It's a big question. Boy, I wish I had

one answer I could tell you. This is the thing. So a few of my

thoughts on that, and I get asked a lot about my thoughts on AI and

the workforce and what is this doing to us? Is it eliminating

jobs and we're not going to have jobs anymore, or certain people will not have

jobs anymore? I do think it is going to change the kind of work that

we do. And I've absolutely seen, I'm sure you've seen in your lifetime as well,

I've seen in my lifetime that the types of jobs that are available are very

different. We tell some kids, the job that you

will have in 15 years may not exist today.

Right. You know, prompt engineer, who knew that that would be a high-paying job that

was highly in demand 5 years ago? We didn't, it didn't exist. So I

do think that the jobs will change. I am generally an

optimist in all things in life, but also in tech,

that what it will do to automate

and take care of jobs that are dangerous. We've got drones

and robotics and technology that can take care of dangerous jobs that we probably don't

want humans doing anyway. Or, I mean, who among

us cannot say, whether you're retired and you look back to

your working years or in your job, maybe 20% of the work you

do, you don't really enjoy. It's not super fulfilling. It's just got to be done.

It's the monotonous stuff. I want that to be automated

so that we can spend time on more valuable things. So as far as workforce

development is concerned, the Columbus Library is actually running some

classes, intro to AI classes. They have lots of other great

classes for individuals, nonprofits, small businesses. They

do resume workshops as well. And so I think

going out and looking for those resources, who in the community— Goodwill Columbus is

teaching some of those classes at library locations. Going out into the community

and looking for those opportunities or going back to Columbus State.

Columbus State Community College has some really great programs that help

to train people into new careers. Mm-hmm. We've also

worked with Color-Coded Labs. It's a great coding bootcamp,

teaches people, largely people of color, lower income individuals, or people

who are likely employed, but they're looking to switch employment.

It's a great program. There are lots of others that might teach you new

skills. Go out and look for those. Look for what fits. What do

you really enjoy doing? It might be just getting some appreciation for

what skills may be helpful, but maybe it'll inspire you into a new career.

Right. And I think using AI and others to explain a concept to me

and learn from it, ask it to explain to you, not to do something for

you. It's very powerful as a teaching tool. So I'm hopeful that that will expand

access. VR, and I think there are a lot of other technologies.

If I could put on a headset and I can experience what it's like to

work in an office, if I've never worked an office job, that's going to be

really helpful in bridging a gap there so that I don't show up on my

first day of work and I've never worked in this kind of environment. My

parents didn't have jobs like this. What do I expect? I think

there are a lot of opportunities for that. Well, if you could have had that

in the chemistry class. For sure would've gone in. You would've dropped. Your

first one, you may have— you never know exactly. Yeah, that one could have worked.

And we've talked at the beginning about the

great resources we have in Central Ohio. We have some wonderful

nonprofits like Goodwill that take care of

job seekers regardless of age, regardless of background,

that can help you. So you may not, again, know

what you need, But if you go and sit down and talk to one of

those folks, chances are pretty good they're going to lead you down a path that's

going to give you those resources. Goodwill, Jewish Family

Services, Westerville's

Warm Westerville, New Directions Career Center, the Urban League, they've

all got great programs. And so those are some great ones. And Aspire used to

be the Workforce Development Board of Central Ohio. There are lots of organizations that are

trying to make sure people have gainful employment. Exactly. Fulfilling employment.

The Columbus Library is probably the greatest resource

that we have, and LinkedIn Learning is free with the

library. And that's tens of thousands of courses that

you can take, non-credit courses. So it's all

out there. Yeah, it's all out there. So thank you. Yeah, we recently had a

few episodes focusing on the other side of it, of employment search

and recruiting. What role do you see AI playing in that strategic

development of organizations and building economy, are nonprofits able

to utilize the same strategies? Boy, that's tricky. Yeah. AI

is inherently bias. It is the— I mean that in the sense that

noun. It is a system that is pure bias.

It is trying to tell you what is the most likely outcome here? What is

the most likely answer that I should give you? And so that concerns me. And

that's why a lot of states have passed laws that say if you're using AI

in your job selection prior in the resume evaluation

process, you need to disclose that to candidates. So, I worry about

that. I also, I hire engineers. We don't typically,

us engineers, we don't typically have the most eloquent communication

skills. I saw a dramatic turn in

2022 when ChatGPT was released that

my engineer applicants were very well-spoken in their responses.

And it's just amazing, the COVID letters I'm getting and

just the eloquence was turned up 10 notches.

It made it very challenging to actually interview people. So

I say you can stand out still if you have a personal

connection. If you reach out to someone, you're genuine, you're authentic about how you

approach the relationships. But I think AI can also really help from the

job seeker side of finding the perfect job. Maybe you're familiar

with the concept of ikigai. I love this concept. Ikigai.

How do you spell it? I-K-I-G-A-I. It's a

Japanese principle that talks about the

intersection. If you think of a Venn diagram, usually has 3 circles. This has 4

circles. It's what you love doing, what you're good at,

what the world needs, and what you can get paid to do. Wow. If you

imagine there are things that that I love doing, but I'm not

super good at them. You might call those hobbies, and there are all these different

things. So trying to find that ikigai, if I can use— we

talked a little bit about the career search and advising students in

college before the podcast. Mm-hmm. If I can

use an AI agent to help me find my ikigai, what is the thing that's

going to match that? And it can ask me questions, and it could be like

an industrial organizational psychologist and help me to identify the perfect

career for me. And then what opportunities, what job postings are out there, and

how would I position myself with those companies? And it coaches me, not as a

replacement for me to copy and paste a cover letter, but as,

as an interview assistant. Maybe it practices, does

role-playing with me in an interview process, and I record an interview and give it

the video and it coaches me. That's incredibly valuable. Yeah. So I

would love to see more of that happen. I'm sure we'll see more of that

from the Columbus Library, from all of our workforce development resources in the future.

That's maybe some of the role that I see AI playing in a positive way.

That's good. I would say that I like that.

I think there's a lot there. But again, as you said before,

you can't take the human connection out of it because if you have

particularly a young job seeker who is very

inexperienced, very unsure of themselves, or an

older job seeker who is at a crossroads

that has really taken away their

self-confidence, they need somebody who's going to also prompt them

through. So I have to learn more about

ikigai. Yeah. Yeah. There's some books about it.

Interesting. Yeah. Interesting. It's good. I talk with my daughters about it too, about finding

their purpose in life and understanding where can they find

purpose and get paid for it. It can be

challenging sometimes. The current version of what color is your parachute kind of thing, or

that kind of thing. Back then, to a certain degree.

Well, yes. And it's that the questions

of what can I give, how can

I make the world better, and how do I get paid,

that the assumptions there are very different than when I

was growing up. Just because the

economy is different, the amount

of responsibility, financial responsibility young

people have compared to what I went through when I got out of college.

When I got out of school, we were all willing to go to the Peace

Corps, which paid nothing. Oh yeah. That

could not happen today, not because kids don't want to do

something for nothing, it's that they have student debt or It

costs a lot more to have a cell phone than it did when we went

home and used mom and dad's landline. Right. Well, I'm so thankful we still have

some people who are very service-minded. AmeriCorps, I think, runs incredible

programs. But you're right, it's not as pervasive as it

was, that mentality of, I want to be valuable to society.

But AmeriCorps, they're helping Garden for All, a garden that's within New

Albany. Oh, I love them. We've had them on our podcast. Yeah, they're a great

group. They are fantastic. They are. They went from their

3/10 of an acre garden to a 3-acre farm.

Right. And I went, I was there actually. I visited them recently and they have

a bunch of, a few AmeriCorps VISTAs who are serving there as well as

some new team members. They've grown a lot. Wow. But so I think about AmeriCorps,

I'm also the board chair right now for City Year Columbus. And City Year

is a group of AmeriCorps members who serve in public schools. And

so I do think we still have people, but not enough. Our

numbers are way down. The recruitment has been up over the last couple of years,

but still not to pre-pandemic levels and probably not to the level of

decades ago. Right. So I keep thinking about that. But that's okay,

because if young folks particularly are willing to

give for a short period of time, it all builds

to what the community needs. So there's nothing wrong with that. Yeah.

I think about us all, even as we're looking at legacy in life, what's the

legacy I want to leave? What are the problems in our society that are worth

solving and what can I do to help solve those? And that's another approach, a

simpler approach than ikigai that I'll take with my daughters. Just say, what are

the problems that you think are big problems that are worth solving?

And then what can you do about them? And let's find something you can do.

And that can be volunteer service, but it could also turn it into their career.

Yeah, and you know, too, the other thing that you were saying that kind of

keeps rolling around in my head, um, when,

when people are frustrated or afraid

of new technology, and I said, you know, technology

changes. Um, we all thought when PCs

came out on every secretary's desk, those secretaries were going to lose their job.

Yeah. Because, uh, they, you know, most of what they did could now be

done In a little small computer.

Ford changed the automotive— Yeah, the assembly

line. The assembly line. They made it a different way than they used to. Exactly.

Now robots are making cars.

It's not just using AI,

Claude, GPT, or whatever, using it correctly,

allowing it to help you do something better, not

take away your ability to do something. Right.

It seems like there are a lot of things that we're wrestling with with technology.

We shouldn't be afraid of it, but we have to continue to address it so

that it's for the good. Right. Yeah.

There was an article Brett and I were talking about that was just

posted, I think this week or last week, I think from the New York

Times, about AI The big joke has been

everybody's having AI write their cover letters. Well, AI is basically

proving that you no longer need a cover letter for

a job application. So basically AI is putting itself

out of business. Right. Yeah, I mean, right, definitely the

AI is generating the COVID letters and the resumes that AI is

gonna read and analyze. Can we? Yeah. Yeah.

Let's stop the ridiculousness. Let's walk back from that. So anyway, so

Brad, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate it. We're glad

to meet you and glad to thank you for your time. We always ask our

guests to give us the last words of wisdom. Can you provide us

with some ideas and maybe tools that we can

use to demystify technology and help us reach

success for ourselves and our organizations? Sure, sure. Absolutely. So

I would suggest columbuslibrary.org. You said you're a fan as well. I'm a big

fan. They have these classes. coming up anytime, whenever

you're listening to this podcast, even years into the future, they have great classes. So

columbuslibrary.org is a great source in Central Ohio. If you're listening

elsewhere, find your local public library. Exactly. They have amazing resources.

If you're a business owner looking to SCORE, SCORE is the name of

the organization that coaches businesses. They're largely

retired individuals or they've had a career in business and now they're

helping to coach small business. Look for those. Look for your local foundation, the Columbus

Foundation, if you're a nonprofit, fantastic resources.

Accelerate Columbus, another really good resource if you're thinking about starting a business. Maybe

it's in that retirement business you want to do something new and

unique. They're a great resource. So, those would be some of the

ones I would look at. And then just keep asking yourself, as far as advice,

is my use of technology enhancing my connection with my family

and friends and loved ones? Am I using it in a way that's beneficial to

society, or is it just draining from my relationships?

Is it reducing my need for human connection? And I

think if I keep thinking about that, that when I come home and my daughters

say, Daddy, did you use AI today in work? But it uses a lot of

water. Daddy, what are you doing? You're polluting. Well, we

got to keep an eye on it. So keep thinking about, am I using this

technology in a way, whatever that technology may be, that enhances

human creativity, enhances connection, or am I using it in a way that

diminishes, that's taking something away, taking away my ability to think

creatively? Or is it enhancing? It's opening up possibilities. I'm now asking—

I mean, what happened with Google? Some people stopped. They no longer have research skills.

Other people learned to Google really well, and now they ask really good

questions. Mm-hmm. So be the person who asks really good questions

and uses the new technology to enhance your creativity, enhance your

relationship and your connection, not to diminish or replace it.

Wonderful. Thank you so much. Yeah, absolutely. Many thanks to our expert guest, Brad

Grebath, founder and CEO of Buckeye Innovation, for joining us today.