Announcer: 0:01

WWDB 860 am Philadelphia and WPEN HD to Burlington. Philadelphia. Entrepreneur, author and financial consultant, Marc Bernstein helps high performing entrepreneurial business owners create a vision for the future and follow through on their goals and intentions and intentions. Ang Onorato is a business growth strategist who blends psychology and business together to create conscious leaders and business owners who impact the world. Founders Forum is a radio show podcast sharing the real stories behind entrepreneurship as founders discover more about themselves, while providing valuable lessons and some fun and entertainment for you. Now here's Marc and Ang.

Marc Bernstein: 0:45

Good morning America. How are you? It's a beautiful day in Philly. It's the second week in a row. I can say that it hasn't been like that for most of the spring, but it's a beautiful day and we have a great guest here today in the studio with us, and we've got Ang Onorato, our corporate hippie, as she likes to be called.

Ang Onorato: 1:02

Especially today. If you saw my outfit, I know.

Marc Bernstein: 1:04

That's what made me think of it. So here we are. So we've got a little theme to start our day.

Announcer: 1:11

Ch-ch-ch-changes. Turn and face the strange Ch-ch-ch-changes.

Marc Bernstein: 1:17

The one of the All right. So thank you for that, tj, that was great. So a little inspiration from my friend Ray Lowe the luckiest guy in the world who had a podcast one of the first ones I went on during the pandemic and it was called Changing the Rules. But here we're talking about changes this morning, because the world is changing around us so quickly and we've been having a great pre-conversation with our guest today, Det Ansinn, and I'm going to introduce him formally in a minute. But talk about change, Ang. What's going on?

Ang Onorato: 1:49

Well, I'm excited because I know we're going to talk a lot about change, managing it, anticipating it, prompting change. But right now I'm coming off Memorial Day weekend. I'm excited for the change, the unofficial change of season. I'm very excited about summer and just slowing down a little bit, hopefully, and just really absorbing some good weather and also having these kind of great conversations because my mind is slower, I can absorb more, so that's kind of my mindset today.

Marc Bernstein: 2:15

I'm absorbed with changes in business, changes in my life. Just, my daughter's life is progressing and just met what I think are her future in-laws this weekend. So that's cool. But business in particular. But I don't want to get into that because I think we'll have a more interesting perspective from our guest. So Det, let's talk about changes.

Det Ansinn: 2:32

Good morning.

Marc Bernstein: 2:33

Good morning, nice to have you here.

Det Ansinn: 2:35

Yeah, I mean this is a really interesting time. Interesting time to be speaking with you this morning because we're right now on the precipice of a massive change driven by artificial intelligence. I mean, artificial intelligence, in one way or another, has been part of our lives for the past 10 years in real scale, but now we're seeing artificial intelligence really popping up in the workplace, popping up in the kinds of work that you know, my firm, bricks Simple, does, and it is changing the way we all have to look at our roles in companies. It changes our value that we're bringing to the table. It changes what's going to be valuable going forward and I think it's important for us to understand and embrace that, because if we don't, we're not going to be a part of that change.

Marc Bernstein: 3:20

And we were talking this morning about a lot of tech people losing their jobs because of these changes in AI and that's something we've never really seen before during the tech revolution.

Det Ansinn: 3:30

Usually, when a new technology drops, there is this drive to hire a bunch of people. We need to do mobile apps, we need to do websites, we're going to do VR, whatever it is. There's always been a drive that this new technology brings in and spurs a lot of hiring. Artificial intelligence has now reached a point where it's going in the opposite direction, where the impact of this technology is the reduction of the number of people that you actually need to do that work to execute that vision. You can take something that previously was a couple days of work and do it in 50 seconds with the power of large language models, and this isn't a hypothetical. It's being done today in corporate America.

Marc Bernstein: 4:13

Yeah, so usually we start out, we want to hear your story as a founder of business and all that. But tell us really quickly about Brick Simple, because I know you're going to reference it a lot and I think it'll be helpful for people to have that background as we're talking.

Det Ansinn: 4:26

Yeah, bricksimple. We're a software development studio. We've been around for 21 some odd years, started at the end of 2001. We've been a leader in mobile application development, ai, vr and AR IoT Basically with BrickSimple. Our whole history in this 23 years of Brick is that we've constantly been looking at change. We've been always on the leading edge of that, because we see a lot of opportunity there. We see the ability to help our customers, see the opportunity to realize new types and categories of products that didn't exist before.

Marc Bernstein: 5:01

There are tons of software development companies out there, but I sense that people come to you for unique reasons. What would you say? Those are I mean we.

Det Ansinn: 5:10

Often we have software companies as clients. I think folks tend to come to us for moonshot type, thinking that we want to do something that's new and radical with this emerging technology, not just work the bellows on something we have. And you know, I really lean upon my team to bring that vision. I mean coding itself, especially in the dawn you know, this dawn of AI everywhere. Coding itself doesn't have nearly the value of being able to architect and put whole solutions together that can improve what companies do and change outcomes for people in the world.

Marc Bernstein: 5:44

So tell us about your beginnings. I know you didn't. I need to tell you that Det is a Bucks County, pennsylvania, resident. He's been very active there in the community and had all kinds of public service job besides everything he's done in business. But you didn't start there, you started in the Midwest.

Det Ansinn: 6:02

Yep.

Marc Bernstein: 6:02

And then came to Bucks County, and then what happened? Actually, it's very interesting. Your first job, let's talk about that For me.

Det Ansinn: 6:08

What's funny is I've been working with computers. I'm going to be 53 here. I've been writing code since I was six years old and I had my first consulting job when I was 12. And it was helping folks with CAD at the time because I knew about all this technology and tying it in.

Det Ansinn: 6:27

And when we relocated to Pennsylvania, that network that you had back in those old days for the days of LinkedIn, like everyone you met network with, are people you actually met and for me, like got here in Pennsylvania, arrived here in Pennsylvania as a 15 year old, like how do I do these things? How do I link up with those people that exist? And they didn't. So I ended up pumping gas at the Dwellstown Airport and when you work at an airport you meet a lot of business owners and folks see you there and I always worked hard.

Det Ansinn: 6:59

I did those things and all the tech I was doing was basically on my own personal time because employment was tough to come by with that. But I was wearing my Drexel orientation t-shirt and this gentleman who owned a military contractor. He pointed at me and says if you're going to Drexel with your work ethic, I want you to work for me and that's how I got back into tech through that route and that journey eventually led me to go work with a technology startup that we grew very quickly, but I made the command decision in 2001, when the dot-com collapse was happening. After the dot-com collapse, that I thought it'd be a great time to do a tech startup and that was the birth of BrickSimple.

Marc Bernstein: 7:43

A great story and there were a lot of pieces in between that which we don't have time to get into today. So everybody, a lot of people we talk about this a lot entrepreneurs if I look at your LinkedIn resume it looks like wow, what a smooth ride, better roses getting from here to here, to there, there. And of course we know it wasn't. We know that there was challenges along the way. I'm sure there were lots of obstacles. What kind of things did you face in terms of building your career and then building Brick Simple?

Det Ansinn: 8:14

I think that nobody's LinkedIn page looks like a whole journey of struggles.

Det Ansinn: 8:18

It's the nature of the beast, but I think for me part of it is that when you're a founder, there's no one around to fire you and you may be starting a company where you're not ready to do what that company needs you to do and you know you may have good mentors. You may have mentors who don't understand what you're doing in your business and I think for me there's a lot of lessons learned over those 23 years lessons learned in how I deal with people, lessons learned how I work with clients and taking that forward and doing that. And you know you either figure out how to do those things and survive and grow with your company or you have to go and pivot otherwise.

Marc Bernstein: 8:57

By the way, I've never done this before, but I forgot to introduce that formally, so I will. Dad Anson is founder and president, as you know already, of Brick Simple LLC. He is a serial entrepreneur. Owner of the company, a software development studio. He's provided technology, business analysis and commentary this is the interesting part I want to get to for Bloomberg Television, business Week, mit Technology Review, talking Points, memo and MTV. His company's work has also been featured on Engadget, joystick, techcrunch, venturebeat, ars Technica, geekcom, gigaom, mtv, nbc News, reuters, rolling Stone and the BBC.

Ang Onorato: 9:41

That's a pretty that's a lot, because he's a really busy 15-year-old. I think he just didn't stop Wow, that's a pretty, that's a lot. Just because he's a really busy 15-year-old. I think he just didn't stop Wow, that's right, he started at.

Marc Bernstein: 9:47

Well, he started at six, so I think he got a head jump on all this.

Ang Onorato: 9:50

You got your reps in, you got your 10,000 hours in very quickly.

Marc Bernstein: 9:55

So, with these challenges that you had, that's what we were talking about. Yeah, what strengths did you develop over the years? There must have been some things you found internally to be able to handle change, to be able to handle obstacles, to be able to handle the challenges that came your way.

Det Ansinn: 10:13

I think that there's so much that you go through in life where you don't think you're going to survive that and you get out the other end and that kind of repeated process that you realize, okay, I'm going to do all that I know I need to do, I'm going to get through this. And because you've been through so much of that, because you've had those tests, and I like to say that people say these are character-developing experiences, like why do I need so much character?

Det Ansinn: 10:40

I can take a relief on that, but I think for me that's always been part of it. I came from very simple beginnings. When I was at Drexel I was disenrolled multiple times for not having enough money to pay my full tuition. I was short, you know, a couple hundred dollars here, a few hundred dollars there, and you know, going through that I was lucky at the time I had professors who held on to my grades until I managed to come up with that money. But I would spend my evenings going to a supermarket parking lot that had those cart shopping carts where you put in the quarter and you get a quarter back. I would find the loose carts and that would pay for my meal the next day. So when you know where that bottom is, when you know how far that's down, I think that helps inform a lot of your perspective.

Marc Bernstein: 11:24

You mentioned that. I've asked that question to a lot of people and essentially, what you just said is survival instinct. Once you survive once, twice, three times, four times, five times, eventually, you know, you look ahead and say I'll survive this too, I'm going to get through it. Of all the answers, that's the one I can relate the best to, because I feel the same way. I feel that's the thing that I've learned over the time. This, you know this too shall pass and this too shall not kill me. You know it's not. Who shall not kill me? You know it's not, you know.

Ang Onorato: 11:51

I think it's survival, but it's also the fact that and I've been binging docu-series of a lot of you know famous people and they tell their stories and you get one common theme beyond the survival thing that I noticed, which is when you have an absolute focus and belief that you know what you're meant to do, and it sounds like it's six years old when you just had this affinity for coding, that I'm getting the impression that nothing was going to keep you from getting through Drexel and at least graduating, whether it was shopping carts or whatever. So I just think that's fascinating.

Det Ansinn: 12:21

Yeah, I mean I'd say that there's a lot of survivorship and entrepreneurship. That's the journey.

Marc Bernstein: 12:28

And just might be a good time to talk about what you like to talk about.

Ang Onorato: 12:33

Yes, well, we need three hours for that.

Marc Bernstein: 12:39

But no, we were talking, you know, before the show and have three and a half minutes before the break.

Ang Onorato: 12:41

But we can continue after the break. Yes, so he knows to kind of reel me in, but you know we typically like to talk about you know how you build your company culture right. What does that look like? Why do people want to come work for you? How do you retain them? How do you attract them? So that question, but also with a wider lens a little bit, that we talked about earlier, which is with your knowledge and experience of seeing how AI is displacing or changing, what kinds of functional roles are out there and what makes you know. It's the white collar roles, too, that people aren't talking about enough. So I'm curious about how tell us a little bit about your culture? And then, how are you seeing the future and how are you preparing for that?

Det Ansinn: 13:17

And I'd say that's truly a two-parter For culture. When I started Brick Simple having been a software developer, someone who still likes the code none of them let me code anymore, which is kind of funny in my day but I wanted to create the kind of environment that would foster a place for what coders like to do, what they value, what they're doing, and part of that for us has been this constant change in evolution. I mean, basically we're in what I consider 5.0 brick simple today. There were four other versions of it because of that need to embrace change in technology. And I think that's the part when you're leading a team and coaching them to understand that you know not to fear that change and everyone's life journey is different. They may not have that survivor instinct in that or understand that they have to make those pivots.

Det Ansinn: 14:07

And I think you're looking also, you know, generationally with AI here you're seeing something where for the first time so there's young managers or youngerish managers in their 40s now the millennials that are entering leadership, that now they're faced with a challenge where AI is reducing the number of people that you need to execute the work and also, if you're not bringing the vision that's necessary, ai could effectively replace you, and we're looking at a world here where it's been forecast recently that 60% of white-collar jobs will be displaced by AI by 2030. And I think there is a personal struggle. Organizations are clearly embracing it, but with a lot of folks who are either in leadership or even the rank and file are wondering how this is going to impact them.

Ang Onorato: 14:53

Yeah, it's definitely going to be a very interesting journey, as we were also talking about. I think it's interesting that the more AI does tasks for us, I think it's important for leaders to realize they need to learn how to think differently. I think that's the critical skill, in my opinion, that leaders need to adopt If they can take some tasks off their desk but still be relevant to not lose their jobs. Learn how to be that visionary thinker and drive your division or your teams or your business in this new realm.

Det Ansinn: 15:21

And it is a time where you're going to be reengineering those business processes and you have to embrace that because it's so much more efficient. We're talking orders of magnitude improvement and that willingness to embrace that is something that's going to be very valued. If you're just valuing what you do based upon what you did yesterday, what you've been doing the past 10 years, I think there's going to be challenging times for the folks who cannot get that desire to change, and it's more that adaptation is more than what would be a poster on the wall or inspirational Instagram post. You know it's truly living that every day.

Marc Bernstein: 15:59

I think that's a perfect time to take a break, and we continue this conversation after a short commercial in a minute.

Announcer: 16:06

Attention employers Ready to secure your business? Verify Protect provides fast, accurate and secure background checks. Ever wonder who's really joining your business? Verify Protect provides fast, accurate and secure background checks. Ever wonder who's really joining your team? Don't gamble with uncertainty. Choose Verify Protect for nationwide, lightning-fast employee background screening. Forget AI glitches. Our pros review each detail. Why Verify Protect? Picture this Flexibility tailored by your hiring team Integration, customization and online ease your rules. Discover legal and criminal checks, employment and education verification, financial and social insight and government and housing checks. Your business shield starts here. Your business shield starts here. Visit VerifyProtectcom today and schedule a game-changing call. Don't play with dice with your hires. Verify Protect your pre-employment screening experts.

Marc Bernstein: 17:06

We're back on Founders Forum, so, Ang, let's go on.

Ang Onorato: 17:09

Yeah, so before we went on air, we were talking about the impact of AI and things of that nature, and Marc had also asked. It seems like a lot of companies come to you because there is a uniqueness to what Bricksimple is, and you mentioned that a lot of your customers are other software development companies. So I'm kind of curious how has that conversation started to change that you're having with those companies when they're coming to you? Are they looking for something different? Are they asking you to think differently? Help them get out of their box? How is that changing?

Det Ansinn: 17:41

I think it's often been a matter of how they're approaching a product, either an external product for their customers or an internal product that supports their team members. I think where that conversation is changing is there's an awareness of this bigger AI shift and part of our clients are wondering how can I really embrace this? How can I? You know what's this technology mean to how we do our work, and I was speaking to the client a week ago. They were going through this process. It was going to be a multi-month effort to port their technology from one platform to another and they were doing that in the old world approach. They weren't leveraging large language models or AI to do that. That project, which was a multi-month project, something that can now be executed in two weeks. And that's when talking with us, the ROI of that conversation, that guidance for them, saving that multiple person months of effort to change that into something in a week's time horizon.

Det Ansinn: 18:41

That's a big shift. And when you're working and you're doing, if you're making whatever widgets you're doing, you're not necessarily thinking about AI and these problems all day long, where that's what our team is doing, our team is looking at that and how IoT fits in there. How do these other medical devices that were involved in development? How do these all get aligned? I think bringing in you know as the expertise that you all provide that guidance. Sometimes you need to see that from the outside and, regardless how innovative your culture is, having an outside set of eyes, bringing different experiences, is always helpful.

Ang Onorato: 19:16

You know you didn't share with us earlier about kind of the intent behind the name of your company.

Det Ansinn: 19:21

Yeah.

Ang Onorato: 19:21

But for me, and as you're speaking, I'm getting this vision that Brick Simple. It's almost like when you talk about the fifth version of the company and how you're helping your clients change. It's like you're building the scaffolding. You're building this foundation brick by brick by brick, as time is evolving and the industry is evolving. So I don't know if that was your intention or not, but it seems to me it's very apropos that, as you're talking about your business, did anything like that come behind your vision 23 years ago?

Det Ansinn: 19:48

It did. There were a couple things that helped is I already had the domain name and I'd used it for some other software I'd written. But I think for us it also ties in well with our mission. You know that we're taking all of these very complicated things and the irony is that Bricksimple's worked with some of those complicated software technologies of the past 20 years Right each step of the way. And we joke about the ironic part of the name, but there's a real part that there is a foundational element, there is a keeping it simple and executable. How do you do this? And it's not just having that cloud talk, kind of consulting that if I had this and this and this, it's how do we make this actually work and how do we make it execute?

Marc Bernstein: 20:26

Had the company for a long time and it was a very forward-looking name back then. Everyone's got kind of cute names like that now.

Det Ansinn: 20:33

Yeah.

Marc Bernstein: 20:34

But I think it's pretty cool that you came up with that a long time ago and its meaning probably has only been enhanced since you've got it.

Det Ansinn: 20:41

Yeah, we were lucky. It also is at a time when people could still have vowels in the names of their tech companies. I mean the domain names are available and you could do those things. That's right, that's a good point it.

Ang Onorato: 20:50

That's right, that's a good point, it wasn't everything.

Marc Bernstein: 20:52

Acronyms are misspelled on purpose. Yeah, Do people. Is your name known in the industry of software developers who are looking for someone like you?

Det Ansinn: 21:02

Most of the work that we generate is based upon our reputation. Obviously, I talk with folks and I go a lot through ideation. I think a lot of it's through referrals. We don't do big blast female campaigns. The company's never put out a press release With all the press that we've got. It's all been earned media and that's been how we're wired.

Marc Bernstein: 21:21

I think there's a certain sincerity to that and without a PR agent or anything like that.

Det Ansinn: 21:24

No PR agent or doing that. I mean, I think there's a certain sincerity to that and what we do with the work it's not simple and it's not. You know, I think in environments like this you don't rely on people just knocking on your door, but in terms of how we engage folks and the value that we're bringing to the table, I think that's really helped us over the years.

Marc Bernstein: 21:43

Interesting. So let's look to the future, since we're looking back over the last 10 years. What that would have to happen for you to feel like that was you'd successfully hit your goals, and this could be business, personal, and please use as much vivid description as you'd like.

Det Ansinn: 22:07

Sure, I mean, I think for me it's looking at all that disruption that we've had. Obviously there's pandemic kinds of disruption. There's mobile app disruption. You know I'm looking at this from Bricks Simple and other businesses I'm involved in right now. With the disruption that we have going on with AI, that it forces you to think through this change and when I look at the next 10 years, I see radically different what Bricks Simple brings in terms of its value and I see certain categories of businesses. There's things as an angel investor I look at where I'm not sure that business exists in 10 years and part of it is understanding that.

Det Ansinn: 22:48

What's happened now and I put a turning point with OpenAI's announcement a couple weeks ago is to me, that was that Netscape navigator moment, when the Netscape navigator landed oh, this is a cool browser, I can go to these sites, but what it was was the first consumer web browser and if you think of all the businesses and our whole world of change I mean banking every aspect of your life is lived through a web browser. This is that kind of moment. This isn't some shiny new. It's not a shiny new phone situation. This is something where it's profound change in how we interact with technology, how we incorporate technology into our work and the value that we bring as leaders to our business and the value that our team members bring to business. So for the next 10 years, when looking at that in this decade, I think within the next two to three, you're going to see every business looking forward. They're either embracing AI or struggling to compete in a world where everyone else has.

Det Ansinn: 23:49

As we get beyond the three-year window which you're going to start seeing, it's not just large language model AI at work.

Det Ansinn: 23:54

You're going to see certain functions like the administration of CISC computer systems, these DevOps positions which were paid zillions of dollars over the past few years, that those positions are already companies working to fully replace those roles with AI end-to-end. Not just large language models, but actually doing the job. And when you can go, right now I can give a drawing of what I want my website to look like or an application to look like the AI can generate the code Within the five years end-to-end. The AI will not only generate that code, will deploy the website for you and take care of all those mundane tasks. So, by the time we get to the 10-year Marc, what you're doing in your business, if you're relying on that kind of block and tackle those types of things, those things are largely going to disappear and what you're looking at is the opportunity to focus on the things that really make a business special. I say this as a technologist. And gearhead and propellerhead as cool as the tech is- Motorhead too, but we already brought that up All part of that too.

Det Ansinn: 25:00

But as much as I like to nerd out on those things, I also understand that the success of business, that's just a component of it and that component is going to get a lot easier in the next decade.

Marc Bernstein: 25:12

So, generally, I like to ask. My next question would be what strengths do you have to deal with this? But you've pretty much been answering that throughout the show the survival instinct, it's the looking forwardness, it's the ability to have a vision about what's coming. So it sounds like you're pretty prepared for these changes as much as possible.

Det Ansinn: 25:32

Yeah, I mean there's preparation as much as possible. There's also there's a lot of time where you're thinking about what does this mean? I've spent with other big shifts in technology. What does this actually mean to us? And when you go through that, I really acknowledge, oh, there's lots of self-doubt in that journey.

Det Ansinn: 25:48

By the time when you're hearing me speak, this is the past six months of thinking through the problems of the weekends working with that, meeting with fellow peers and other business leaders, involved in many roundtables around AI and where that's going. So it's the kind of it's all absorbed in doing that. But I think when you're not preparing for these things, it can feel like a real shock, and it's only a shock because you weren't preparing for these things. It can feel like a real shock and it's only a shock because you weren't prepared for that. Not that it was, you know. Yes, it wasn't really a surprise. No one else was surprised. This happened, but that shock is something that you you know. I think, with preparation, with dutiful thought and giving your time to think through the problems, that's really key.

Marc Bernstein: 26:31

So we're almost out of time. We have time for maybe two or three quick lightning round questions. Ask you a fun one first. I've alluded to it, but what do you like to do in your spare time?

Det Ansinn: 26:42

I'm a car and motorcycle guy. I have Harleys. I also have Ducatis, which I know for motorcycle enthusiasts that's walking in both worlds, but I enjoy that. It's good thinking time. We've got beautiful roads here in Bucks County in the Philly region. I just enjoy that.

Marc Bernstein: 26:57

It's kind of like the yin and the yang of motorcycles.

Det Ansinn: 26:59

Exactly.

Marc Bernstein: 27:02

Number two if you could speak to your younger self, you were pretty active as a younger self, as it was, but what advice would you give you in hindsight?

Det Ansinn: 27:12

I think there's a couple aspects to it. One of the things as an entrepreneur is that at some level we're all workaholics and such. But I really look at things where I was really anxious and nervous, I did a lot of worry that was wasted and it's good to focus on your problems. Do that You're not as engaged in escapism. But I'd advise my young self to kind of embrace that and give yourself time to work through those problems and challenges.

Marc Bernstein: 27:36

So, from your young self to your older self, what thoughts do you have about your legacy? And we've got about a half a minute to discuss.

Det Ansinn: 27:42

I think for me I look at all the people that Bricks Simple has employed over the years, the other startups and things I'm involved with I try to have a real positive impact. I mean I try to have a real positive impact. I mean I think the biggest legacy impact you can have is from the people you've mentored, those folks you've coached and supported. You know that's really what's left when we're all dust. That's what people know, that's what people remember.

Marc Bernstein: 28:02

Well, it's clear you're doing that and you know. Wish you further prosperity and success and good luck in health with Brick Simple and with your life, and thank you all for joining us today on Founders Forum and we look forward to seeing you again next week.