Don’t Talk to ChatGPT in Bed with Biz/Dev

David and Gary sit down to take a hard look at how custom software development has changed—and where it’s heading. From the early days of dev shops built on code craftsmanship to today’s pivot into AI-driven workflows, they unpack the opportunities, risks, and realities of this shift.

It’s a candid conversation about what happens when AI starts to write code, how it changes the client–developer relationship, and why trust and transparency matter more than ever. If you’ve wondered what the future of dev shops looks like when AI is at the center, this episode lays it out.

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Our Hosts

David Baxter - CEO of Big Pixel

Gary Voigt - Creative Director at Big Pixel

The Podcast

David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Music by: BLXRR

Chapters

• 0:09 Introduction and Context of AI in Development
• 2:12 The Evolution of Hiring in the AI Era
• 4:57 Understanding Developer Levels in the Age of AI
• 7:30 The Role of AI in Coding and Development
• 9:18 AI Tools and Their Impact on Project Costs
• 12:20 The Future of Development: Embracing AI
• 15:00 Cultural Shifts and Personal Experiences with AI
• 17:42 The Legacy of Hidden Figures
• 18:40 AI as a Tool for Efficency
• 19:50 Leveraging AI for Small Businesses
• 22:20 The Evolution of AI Interaction
• 26:01 Building Memory in AI Systems
• 29:03 Final Thoughts on AI and Business

Transcript

[00:00:00] Gary: You can ask AI to teach you how to be smarter than AI or use AI to your advantage.

[00:00:06] David: AI, how do I use you better?

[00:00:09] Gary: What do I need to learn?

[00:00:13] David: Hi everyone. Welcome to the Biz Dev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host, joined today by Gary Voy. Hello, sir.

[00:00:22] Gary: Hello, how are you?

[00:00:23] David: I am. Good man. More importantly, we are joined by Dan Gonzalez, who is the CEO and Co-founder of District C. So Dan, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us.

[00:00:35] Dan: You David and Gary. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.

[00:00:38] David: Absolutely. So tell me about District C. You've got a, you're a little different than most of our guests here. Tell me about it.

[00:00:44] Dan: Yeah, so District C is about an eight and a half year old nonprofit. Got our start here in North Carolina and we are trying to prepare. Young people for modern work, that's our focus. And so we we partner with school districts and education institutions to bring them programming to do just that. And our flagship model is called Teamship. You can think of Teamship as. A reimagined team-based internship where teams of students solve real problems for real businesses in the community. And we run some of those programs directly. We also partner with K 12 school districts and higher ed institutions to help them develop, to develop the capacity to deliver Teamship for their students.

And we provide all the background support for that.

[00:01:33] David: That sounds very similar to what NC State does with their entrepreneurship clinic. I assume you're connected with them and you know all those fine people.

[00:01:41] Dan: Yeah, I remember the days of Louis Sheets

When he, that program and Gabe Gonzalez, great team that I got, they got a great program there. Haley, Huey, I think is involved these

[00:01:52] David: She's the head lady now.

[00:01:53] Dan: Yes. Fantastic. Fantastic team of people. Yeah. And so it's a similar model. Their goals, I think are pretty similar to ours, which is they wanna have students getting real experiences with

real organizations to prepare them for modern work. Their focus may be a little bit more intentional on developing. Entrepreneurs outta that.

Ours is really focused on helping students develop the foundational skills they need for any kind of job in their future. Namely how you work with other people who might have different perspectives and experiences and how you do that to solve really challenging problems that have not been solved before.

In the K 12 space. A lot of people call that, durable skills, professional skills, whatever you want to call it. Team-based problem solving is what we're really focused on.

[00:02:40] David: So how do you, like when you, is the, you say K 12, so I'm assuming you're not putting, elementary, middle schoolers solving real problems. That's mostly high school, I assume.

[00:02:52] Dan: It's mostly high school students. Yeah. 

Yeah. 

[00:02:55] David: I have a high

schooler. I have a senior in high school and a freshman in college right now. And I'm curious, 

High schoolers are notoriously flaky, right? This is just the nature of that age, and they're super busy too. So how do you combat that fun little wrinkle?

[00:03:14] Dan: Yeah, I think you're hitting on David, something really important in education and something that a lot of educators talk a lot about is how do you motivate and engage students in the work that you're trying to get them to

do? What we, I think have seen and I wonder if Haley would corroborate this with her work at the E-clinic is that when you give students real work that matters to real people. It switches on a different level of motivation and engagement.

And the way that we talk about this is trying to help students transition from what I would call a completion mindset. School is all about. Finish your homework, finish the test, finish the chapter, move on to the next thing. Put things in your rear view, mirrors that you can move on to the next thing. School trains in us. This like instinct that we need to get done with stuff. Work, as you all know, is about contributing real value to real people, whether it's a client, a customer, your supervisor, a teammate. That's how your value as a teammate or as an employee is measured by your ability to contribute to others.

And so when we put students in a scenario where they have the opportunity to do that, and they're sitting across the table from someone like you. And you're saying, Hey, we're really struggling with this problem. We have not figured it out. All of a sudden, that provides an opportunity to deliver real value, and it's just human nature.

When you have a purpose, when you have the opportunity to do something important you switch on and you engage. And I think that's what we've seen over the last eight years, and it's a really critical part of the model. All the problems are real, they're all meaningful, they're all urgent. There are no simulations and no case studies for that reason.

[00:04:56] David: Very good. Gary, were you gonna ask something? I thought I interrupted you earlier.

[00:05:00] Gary: I was just curious once you get involved, like the younger kids, do you get involved with this? Schools, like gifted programs.

[00:05:10] Dan: on occasion I don't know that we have any partnerships with gifted programs. The,

what we have found is first of all, our start in this came from. Wanting to provide these kinds of opportunities to all students. And what we have learned, and I know this from my own history, is that students with social capital and family connections, they typically don't have a lot of trouble finding internships or experiences outside of school.

To help them with their career progress. It's all the other students that might be taking care of grandparents after school or might be working a minimum wage job at a fast food restaurant. They don't typically have access to these kinds of things. And so our mission from the beginning has been let's make this available to all students.

And the way that we do that is through our partnerships with schools and school districts. So we partner with them to help them implement Teamship. For their students during the school day. And that means that any student at that school typically then has the opportunity to engage. What we've also found is students who are traditionally good at the game of school, in other words, those who might have had a history of academic success oftentimes struggle with this model because it operates by a different set of principles and rules, right? There aren't predetermined steps. There aren't instructions given by the teacher for you to do X, Y, Z before you move on to A, B, C. A lot of the onus has put on the student teams, we coach them on the processes and tools, but they drive their own work and they own their own work. A lot of times for students who have figured out how to be good at school and get the a. That's a really big shift. What we find on the other side is students who haven't typically been great academically often find a new gear for themselves and they find a voice that they maybe didn't know that they had previously. So it's a program that levels the playing field in a really powerful way.

[00:07:05] Gary: Very cool.

[00:07:06] Dan: Yeah.

[00:07:07] David: How, one of the things I know with my daughter in particular is she has no idea what she wants to do, so how do you. Get them in a place where they're providing value on something they may or may not have any interest in.

[00:07:22] Dan: Yeah, this is a really good question. There are a lot of programs out in the world and educators thinking about work-based learning for the purpose of helping students explore and spark interest in a field or a topic or a career or a job, whatever it might be. So I feel like that the. There are a lot of things out there that do that we, we don't, and we intentionally don't strive for that.

Our focus is on, we want to help students develop the team-based problem solving skills that will be transferrable to any job that they have in the age of ai. And I can talk a little bit more about that in a second, but ours is about developing those fundamental skills. That's what teamship is all about, a secondary benefit. Is, your daughter through participation on a teamship team through her school, may end up sitting across the table from a professional who has a job at a company that she had never imagined, right? And so there is this secondary benefit of getting exposure and access to careers and workplaces that are just totally off the radar for students.

And so we see this often as a byproduct of the experience. So they're developing the skills they need for modern work, but they're also. Opening doors and developing, building social capital with professionals who have potentially careers of interest to them. But we don't actually allow students to choose the businesses or the problems that they work on because we want them focused on building the team-based problem solving skills that matter so much.

[00:08:52] David: So I would imagine you had just alluded to this, but I would imagine your life has changed like everyone else's. In this new age that we find ourselves eight years ago, five years ago, three years ago, two years ago, probably your program operated very differently than it does today because of ai. How are you And, and I will caveat this again, I, I'm coming from my wheelhouse 'cause I'm in the middle of all this with high school. But one of the things that I find this, and I'm not even gonna call it generation, I'm gonna call it these high schoolers right now. 'cause in five years they won't have this problem. Because AI is so new, the teachers are scared of it. They're telling 'em to stay away from it. But everyone else outside of teachers are saying, you better learn this or you're never getting a job. And so like my daughter is afraid to use it 'cause she doesn't wanna get in trouble. My son is in in college and some of his professors are embracing it. Some are like, you better back off dude. And. Because they're, it is so new and it'ss so scary on both sides, right? Students and teachers. So how do you encourage for this, and this is just, I'm guessing this will be gone in five years 'cause the teachers will understand how to teach with it and the students will understand how to engage with it.

Just like Google back in the day and calculators before that. How do you get these kids ready to use these new tools now?

[00:10:08] Dan: Yeah, I, it's, this is such the right point. I think in the education community, we're currently having the wrong conversation and I think you're right that over time this will settle out, but right now the conversation is. Is it cheating to use chat GPT? And I think the conversation we need to be having is, what does it mean to have human value? In a labor market that has been upended by ai, what does it mean to have human value? What do you have to be good at as a human? I would contend that humans have to be great at mobilizing others and coordinating with others to pursue common purpose and solve common problems, and that is always gonna be valued.

AI is a tool to help you do that chat. GPT is a tool to help you do that. But your ability to mobilize other human beings around common purpose, to inspire them to leverage their skills, their strengths, to support them in developing on their weaknesses, so that as teams of people, we can solve the big challenges that we have ahead.

Certainly with the support of ai. But if you can't do that, and this is what I tell students all the time, if you cannot do that, if you can't work with others to do hard things, you will not have a place in the modern economy. Because AI is gonna be doing all of the rote procedural stuff that humans used to do. And so for us, the focus is really on that team-based problem solving aspect and learning how to, develop empathy for others, recognize other strengths, tap into those strengths, ask really deep, curious questions. And I think that's where we need to go. I'm hopeful that we'll get there sooner rather than later, but things are shifting so fast as you alluded to.

[00:11:52] David: I read in a million newsletters that I have found myself signing up for. said that jobs. Or have been traditionally, like I'm a developer and so when people think of that means I write code. Gary wastes my time and money doing pictures and arrows and stuff. No, I'm just giving him grief. He designs things.

But when you say he's a designer, people think he's doodling and making boxes and arrows. But what we're finding is 

a ai, 

[00:12:20] Gary: do you mean? Don't jump on the bandwagon, Dan.

[00:12:22] David: I'm just saying it. What we're finding is a job, whether it's Gary's mine or anybody's, is not that single task anymore. It's like you've gotta, you know that, oh, he makes pretty things. I write code, right? I type for a living. That's my joke that I used to say. But now we're finding AI is very good at certain tasks, but a developer or a creative director, which is what Gary does, is a bundle of tasks. And what we're finding is that AI is good at some of them. Horrible at others. And the value that humans bring are those who encompass a lot of those buckets and can make the various ais that are doing this task really well in this task, really. And they're providing the glue for the tools, that overarching thing that connects those two together. And that's where the value of humans are and will be for at least the foreseeable future until AI jumps. A massive leap. 'cause it's not what it does now. How did I know? I just butchered that. It was very well done in the newsletter. However, Lenny's newsletter is what I was reading. But anyway, I attributed it.

Gary, give me credit. The, but did I, did my rambling make sense? Is that what you're finding with these students? Is that something that is encouraging or is that scary or what?

[00:13:36] Dan: Yeah, and I would contend, and Gary jump in here if you disagree, but I would contend that what makes you excel at your job is your ability. Not to create squares and arrows, but to understand human emotion. And every problem is a human problem. Every human is driven by emotion, and so whether you are designing an experience, designing a visual, designing a website. Whatever it might be, you have to understand the human emotion that you're tapping into or solving for or else you're not gonna, you're not gonna be good at your job. And I think that's true in the design world. I think it's true for software engineers, it's true for educators. And I think that is, that's really the focus of what we're trying to do, is we're trying to help, we're trying to help students become great humans. And if you are a great human. You'll succeed in whatever job that you encounter. Yes, you'll of course need to develop some of the technical skills that are associated with that role, but without the human component it's gonna be a struggle. And so that's really what we're focused on. I think that message is resonating.

And I think for educators, teachers who have for so long been so focused on. This is the content I have to deliver over the next 50 minutes of this class period. This idea that we need to focus on human development and helping students become great empathizers and collaborators and communicators. I think this is there's a lot of energy around this and I think the AI evolution is helping us focus on this in a new way, which I'm really excited about.

[00:15:18] Gary: Yeah, I love that perspective, and I love the idea that like high school and beginning college, it's a great age where you can take the traditional, what is a job and the value of every job in that, older generation and just flip it on its head and be like a lot of what they're used to being the job can now be handled, by ai.

So our purpose of this new job is, like you said, it's much higher level, much human to human kind of problem solving instead of just tasks and small things just like. David was saying like the calculator in Google when they were introduced, it changed things too. Just like any industrial revolution or part of it where manufacturing got better.

Lasers, gyroscopes, everything, every advancement in technology changes the paradigm of, industry and what people's jobs actually are at the time.

So Yeah.

I think this is a great age to kinda shift the perspective of what a job used to be versus what a job or career can be with 

[00:16:18] Dan: Yeah. Are you all feeling that in your own, I hate to turn the tables on you here, but are you feeling that in your own work?

[00:16:24] Gary: like David, I have two kids, one done with college, one just finishing high school and starting college at the same time. And yeah, their approach is not so much we're afraid of AI or that we use ai, it's just it's a new thing that we have to

how to work with, it's not really a fear or a. They don't look forward to using it as a way to cheat in school. That's like a different thing, but they're looking for how they can accomplish their dream job or dream goals with the help of ai.

[00:16:55] Dan: Yep.

[00:16:56] David: Let me play contrarian a little bit. So if I create a human who is just a big pile of soft skills, that's not very useful, right? If I'm just empathetic and nice and able to work well with others, but I have no hard skills. That's where I, I, I hear that argument and I'm not really, I'm not disagreeing with y'all at all.

[00:17:18] Gary: I think problem solving is more of a hard skill, not a soft skill.

[00:17:23] David: potentially.

But creative thinking is, is might be one of those that mixes the two, but I'm just, I hear those things, Hey, we're just gonna make our people better humans. And I, I love that concept, but at some point the rubber's gotta meet the road and I have to have a real skill that's, you know, I have to be able to code or design or build or, you know, do the math so the road doesn't fall over.

Whatever it is. I gotta be able to do that. And so it's still and. I, it is just weird. I'm just imagining five years when all the tasks the actual concrete tasks that I just described are all done by a bot. What do we do? Do, are we,

[00:18:00] Gary: what's the end goal of those tasks? Like why were those tasks ever created? In other words, if you have bots doing these tasks for what reason? What's the end goal of that task? 

[00:18:11] David: generally it's 

[00:18:11] Gary: goal is going to be a bigger problem to solve. That's gonna be the bigger thing. The more progress that we can create, the further we can go with technology and stuff like that.

It just opens up limitations. It doesn't really just make people sit around and do nothing. It just lets them think on larger scale problem solving.

[00:18:31] David: I simply, I mean, I guess all jobs at some point, the end result is to do something for a human, at least currently our job, you know, whatever it is, you're building a car, you're building a road, you're building a website. At the other end of the. Is a human. So those human soft skills you've gotta keep that laser focus.

I guess I'm, maybe I'm off, I'm, maybe I'm, I'm just thinking out loud how that, when all the tasks are taken by the robots, what's left? It's just kind of a weird question. I.

[00:19:01] Dan: Yeah, it's hard to even conceptualize that. But I think you're hitting on an important point, David, which is something we think a lot about which is this idea that you are a better problem solver. Especially in some domain, if you have some content knowledge and some expertise in that domain,

right?

It's why I think at the moment, senior software developers aren't really. I don't know that there's a, like a job crisis at the senior

level or entry level software. It seems like it's a little tougher as a college graduate to get into that. And that's because these senior developers have a ton of experience and are able to leverage AI in some creative ways to solve some problems. And I think that's true in any domain. Your content expertise or your access to content is gonna make you a better and more robust problem solver. And so our contention isn't that you don't need the hard skills or even the content knowledge that you would learn in school, but the Teamship model flips the like sequencing of those, right?

So in traditional school might be, Hey, we're gonna teach you what an ISO triangle is, and you're gonna drill that a hundred times and you're gonna raise your hand in the middle of the lesson and say. Why do I have to learn this? And the teacher is probably not gonna have a great answer to that. What we would love to do is say. And what we try to do is, here's a problem. What content do you need to go learn and figure out in order to better solve this problem? What subject matter experts do you need to access in order to give you a shot at better solving this problem? So that front stage is the value add, problem solving work supported by all of your process skills, but also all of the content you need to go and learn to in order to do that work well instead of the reverse, if that makes sense.

[00:20:44] David: Yeah, I mean, if you're, I was never good at math, and so you could say, well, all those years I took math. Were a waste. 'cause in my day to day, I don't use much more than basic mathematics, right in computer programming. But at the same time, you don't know that when you're a kid, first off, you don't know what you're gonna be.

So if you only learn one subject, you're kind of shooting yourself right in the face. But at the same time is if you're an engineer, you've gotta learn all these things, you know, building a road. To get that content, like you're saying that yeah, the AI might be able to build and design something, but if I'm don't have that content, like you said, that knowledge of as a broad sense, then I'm not able to direct the tool correctly.

'cause all it's gonna do is reflect what I'm telling it. Like one of the things we is, I think a, a good analogy. So the other day one of my guys was like, man, I'm, he had a bug to fix and he was using AI to help it. And he is like, it's just, we're just pounding on this thing and. I told it I wanted to do this, and I was like, well, maybe the difference is instead of just saying this is the way to go, which is like going through this wall, just banging your head on this wall until it breaks. Maybe if we started and you asked AI. What are ways to do this? And maybe one of those ways it tells you is to go around the wall rather than through it. 'cause the only way our human mind thought was to go straightforward and it's like, oh, well I now know enough about all of these things that's a good idea.

I know that's a good idea because of my knowledge. That's a good mixture of AI plus human, I think

[00:22:15] Dan: Yeah,

[00:22:15] Gary: You can ask AI to teach you how to be smarter than AI or use AI to your advantage.

[00:22:22] David: AI, how do I use you better?

[00:22:25] Gary: What do I need to learn?

[00:22:33] AD: BigPixel builds world class custom software and amazing apps. Our team of pros puts passion into every one of our projects. Our design infused development leans heavily on delivering a great experience for our clients and their clients. From startups to enterprises, we can help craft your ideas into real world products that help your business do better business. 

[00:23:01] Dan: The current education system is very content. Focused. It's about delivering content. We don't have the balance we need in terms of giving students real experiences where they're focused on team-based problem solving.

I think if we can, address that balance a bit, still try to spark students' interest through, topic categories and, coursework that they're doing, and give them these real world experiences that they can put on their resume, demonstrate that they've delivered value and contributed in a real way that's gonna set them up for a better future, hopefully.

[00:23:31] David: I can't agree with that more. I mean, I told my kids I waited tables when I was in high school and college, and I, I still credit that four years of me waiting tables. With giving me the ability to deal with obnoxious people, the ability to get what I needed done in res, even when there's obstacles there, you know, whatever.

That is a human. But usually it's dealing with other people. Dealing with people is painful, can be, and every job has some jerk you don't wanna work with. I have to deal with Gary every day and if you don't learn how to do that, like you never get that first job, you never, those people just fall apart in the real world. You know what I'm saying? It's like, I think that district C as opposed to school, like you're saying, you're in the class, whatever, but now you're dealing with, uh, an unreasonable human, which might be your client, it might be your boss, it might be some other person at the company you're working with completely unreasonable. And now what?

You can't fire 'em.

[00:24:25] Gary: those are exactly the soft skills that you mentioned before.

[00:24:28] Dan: Yeah. And you're hitting on, you're hitting on one of the really key design principles. We don't feel like it's our, we don't strive to create perfect experiences for students. That would mean having perfect teammates, a perfect business partner who has clear answers to every question you ask 'em. Can perfectly articulate their problem. A lot of times students will get a little bit frustrated when they ask the business partner questions about their problem. And they might give two or three answers that conflict, or they might say, I don't actually know and I think we need to help. This is part of the experience, is helping students break out of the expectation that the experience is curated for them and more helping them develop the tools that they need to deal with those tough situations.

As you said, Gary. When they encounter them because they are gonna encounter them in the workplace. That is a certainty. Yeah, that's a really important part of the design.

[00:25:22] David: I love that it, me and Gary joking all the time. The worst clients are the ones that say, I know it and I'll see it. You just, Hey, what do you want this to look like? Just surprise me. I'll know it's right. Oh, come on.

Oh, just the worst. Anyway,

[00:25:38] Gary: Or I'm not sure what I don't like about it, but just keep giving me options.

[00:25:44] David: just try again. Let's try again.

[00:25:46] Gary: Just keep, just if you gimme like 15 to 20 options. Yeah.

[00:25:50] Dan: This is resonating with me. I've been one of those bad clients for sure.

[00:25:54] David: Oh, man. It's, it is tough and yeah. I could go on. That's a whole nother podcast. Alright.

[00:26:00] Gary: wait. That's what we could use AI for to weed out the tough clients. You want 20 options here. Here's chat. CPTs, top 20 options for you. Look how bad they are.

[00:26:09] David: This is totally non-related to anything we've been talking about, but it's becoming more and more common that people will pass off AI work as their work. And it is so bad. It's so bad, but it's happening more and more and AI is getting better, so they think they're getting but away with it, but most clients can smell it a mile away.

But it is getting more and more common. It just emails you get written, like I have a, this is my personal bias, but I really don't like when I get an email, clearly is AI written. I, I, I am talking to a human. I want to talk to a human. That's, again, this is a personal bias of mine. When I start seeing the m dashes start showing up all over the place, you

know, that's ai. 

[00:26:50] Gary: Maybe that's another reason why it's good for high school kids and college kid, college kids to learn AI now is so that they can recognize the AI slop in the future.

[00:26:58] David: oh, for sure. I just, I think, become, I think the bottom line of this, at least from what I'm, that the thing that matters most and will become more and more important is authenticity, being human. Yeah, talking to a human. You're gonna have these amazing ch I was just thinking, all those great customer service bots that are coming around and they're all AI and you're talking to them, you're still gonna have people pushing zero. Just 'cause I just want a human. The problem is will, you know you're talking to a human anymore? I don't know, 

[00:27:27] Dan: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:27:29] David: All right.

[00:27:30] Gary: Now Dan I just had one more thing I wanted to mention and then I'll ask the final question. But you mentioned earlier, Dan, something about changing the way we. Teach and changing the way education is in the future. And I think that's a good perspective to have. And I definitely think that's.

A shift that needs to happen, especially here. 

[00:27:49] Dan: Yeah. 

[00:27:50] Gary: typically when we have entrepreneurs and business owners on, we ask them what their top three pieces of advice would be for a new business owner or entrepreneur. But since this is a little bit different, I'm curious to find out what your top three pieces of advice would be for any high school or early college student for skills to learn either now or for the future when they enter the workplace.

[00:28:16] Dan: Appreciate the question. I actually prepared for the first version of the question,

[00:28:20] Gary: You can give us both if you want, but

[00:28:22] Dan: an entrepreneur? And I have, I I have, I have a bonus one too. I've got four of them. I've got my notes here. Can

[00:28:28] David: Hey, you can absolutely do ignore Gary.

He's not an important to skillful.

[00:28:33] Dan: But I can also answer that question. I really thought about this because I do. Entrepreneurship is so hard. You all know it. Like founding something, starting something that works is really hard. So the first tip, I would say less focus on ideas, more focus on execution. I think a lot of our, like entrepreneurship, education is help, is. Giving students the opportunity to come up with an idea. And I think it leaves people with a false impression that to start a good business, you have to have some like really unique unicorn idea, right? Whereas there's so many businesses out there that succeed because you just execute better than the competition. So that's one thing. Second, less planning, more doing. I think at District C in the early years we like. Had Had just like a, an idea for what this thing was gonna look like. And it turned out being totally different because we actually found students, found business partners. We just started doing the work.

And those are years that like, I really treasure because it set the foundation for everything that came after it. And so I think the temptation is, let me write this 50 page business plan. There's some value in that, but just go out and start doing stuff and you're gonna learn much more than you imagined. The third thing is relationships will drive your progress. And good relationships are two directional. I think that there are tons of successful entrepreneurs that I know in the triangle. Who are so good at giving back to the community and giving back to other founders and entrepreneurs with no strings attached and no expectation for reciprocation. And then when the time comes, like of course you want to help that person and your next lead or your next gig or whatever it might be, it always comes from a person that you know, or someone that you know who knows someone. And like the relationship building is really key. And then the last thing is. Doing instead of planning that takes time. Building really good two directional relationships takes time. Building something that works and that is successful. It just takes way longer than you think it's going to. And so like I, I feel like you've really gotta have the stomach to look out 2, 3, 4 years and know okay, I may not know if this is gonna work. Until three years from today, and it's just gonna take longer than I think. That's something that we learned at starting District C even in years three or four. We were still asking ourselves a question like, is this working? Are we really, so anyway, those are four, four things that I would say just based on the experience

[00:31:02] David: I would say that last one is particularly based on our earlier conversation and AI in general because things are quote unquote faster with AI people. I think people's impatience for success has gotten worse. It's I built this so fast, so success should be fast. Boy, that's not true. That hasn't changed like the to build a successful business takes. A lot of time. Now your V one might fly out the door, but the truth of the matter is you're not gonna be successful until V three or four and you can't get V three or four until you get feedback about one and two. And those just take time. And I find I'm feeling that more with founders when I'm talking to them and stuff.

They're like, I don't need to hire anybody. I'll just use AI to build, I have 30 digital employees now that I can just don't have to talk to anyone ever again. Okay,

[00:31:55] Gary: I heard on a podcast that used to cost $50,000 from a developer, now I could do for $10 in credits from chat GPT. 

[00:32:03] Dan: Mm. 

[00:32:04] David: and even if that's true, that doesn't actually change the equation of success. That's where I think is, it doesn't, none of that changes that, that patience to get up every day and to get to that next goal and to get to that next goal and to keep going. That's how business is built. That's been the same since the 15 hundreds to any modern day of today.

It's slow. And this, like you were saying, it, it takes a certain kind of person and that's not changing. And I think there's a lot of people who are jumping on this thinking this is gonna be a quick overnight thing. And so anyway, I'm just, that's a really long way of

agreeing with what you just said, so there you go.

[00:32:42] Gary: yeah, and the very first point you made, Dan, it was something that we don't hear often, but it is extremely true. You do not need to have the next unicorn idea if you just have a good way to execute better.

[00:32:54] Dan: Yeah.

[00:32:55] Gary: So many business. And now I think as far as the copy and create, it seems like where we're going, there are not a whole lot more original ideas out there at this moment.

So you're seeing a lot of copy and refine type businesses start

[00:33:10] Dan: Yeah, just think about favorite restaurant. The restaurant is not a new concept, but

you do it better than the others. The one tip I would give to students, I'll just do one. Is focus less on getting focus, less on getting done with stuff. Focus more on how you can deliver real value for real people in your next experience, whatever that is, whether it's for free or paid, working at McDonald's or doing the internship, how can you deliver real value to someone else? That's always gonna lead you to the next step. So that's the one piece of advice I'd give

there. 

[00:33:39] David: love it.

[00:33:40] Gary: Awesome. So Dan, if anybody wants to learn more about you or about District C, where's the best place to find you?

[00:33:46] Dan: Yeah, district c.co. I still have regrets for using the.co. People put an M on the end all the time,

[00:33:53] David: Did you, is dis, is the calm squatter or is there someone sitting on it?

[00:33:58] Dan: yeah, someone had that, at least back then. I haven't checked.

[00:34:00] Gary: Uh, you're telling David's story. We've been unfortunately.net for many, many years because of a squatter.

[00:34:06] David: There's, yep, I we're the big pixel.net because big pixel dot, everything was taken and not you being used mind you and the big pixel.com was taken and that is at least being used, but I've been trying to buy it for literally a decade. It's true story.

[00:34:22] Gary: Anyways. Also are you on LinkedIn? Can people just search Dan Gonzalez on LinkedIn? Just your C

[00:34:28] Dan: Dan Gonzalez, district C on LinkedIn and yeah, looking forward to hearing from people. And thank you both for having me on. I really appreciate it. I've not done, I've done a bunch of podcasts, but none like this one from this angle, so I'm grateful. Good

to

[00:34:40] David: Hey, we were glad to have 

[00:34:41] Gary: to hear that.

[00:34:42] Dan: Yeah. 

Love it. I.

[00:34:44] David: Alright, on that note, we are gonna take off. Thank you everybody. We'll be back next week.

[00:34:48] Gary: See ya.

[00:34:50] Speaker: That wraps up this episode of the Biz Dev Podcast, and this time you get me, Scott Bailey. I'm the lead dev over here at Big Pixel, and I know what you're thinking. I thought David did all the work. Well, not exactly. We have an awesome team of people to back in both. Biz Dev is a production of Big Pixel, the US based provider of UX design strategy, and custom software.

This podcast is edited by Audio Wiz Matt McCracken and Christie Pronto marketing guru for Big Pixel. Want to connect? Shoot us an email at hello@thebigpixel.net. Or you can find out some Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, X and LinkedIn.