Why HIPAA Readiness Holds Up MedTech Deals

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0:00 In MedTech, the difference between a good quarter and a great one isn't always the product. It's the friction standing in the way. Broken sales cycles, misaligned teams, deals that stall at the finish line. Every leader feels it, and the best ones know how to remove it. Welcome to Zero Friction, the podcast where we go inside the minds of MedTech's top commercial leaders to uncover the real barriers they face, the decisions they make, and the systems they build to keep the revenue moving. I'm your host, Terry Coutsolioutsos. Let's remove some friction.

Well, hello folks. Welcome to the Zero Friction Podcast, and today I have Mike Scheerhorn from Iron Fort. Iron Fort is a HIPAA compliance platform that is really remarkable about it's about digitizing and changing the way compliance is is being adopted in the healthcare marketplace. So, first I just want to hand it over to Mike and give himself a quick introduction about a little bit of his history and what he's doing today, and then more about the company, and then we'll dig deep into the friction points around what the product is doing to solve, as well as Mike as a co-founder and some of the things that he is challenged with on a day-to-day basis and how he works through those things. So, Mike, welcome to the podcast. Glad to have you here.

Thank you, Terry. I'm very excited as well. This is always a fun opportunity for me. I'm probably one of few people on Earth that are excited to talk about data privacy and security, but thank you so much for reaching out, and very excited to be here. So, my background is very much in the compliance realm of care health tech. Really took a focus on HIPAA about 4-5 years ago, and had worked internally at some large organizations, Publix, as well as an EMR company. So, all the way up to privacy officers. Once I got there, I had realized this can be done a lot better. The AI boom was happening about 6 months ago, and said, "I have to get on this now, or else it will be a bloodbath here trying to get into the market and get market share. So, that's how I ended up at Iron Fort. We are a GRC platform. Really focus on the evidence and documentation perspective so we can automate your technical scans,

Scan your environment. We automatically can plug into AWS, a Google Cloud as well as Azure, scan your technical environment, get those results as well as scan administrative or non-technical items such as your policies and procedures. We'd scan those, find gaps in that as well, and from there all those items that we've identified they go into a specific area called risk / gaps. There you have it. There's your annual risk analysis and then you go through, categorize those, intermediate as it goes on. Ideas to make HIPAA compliance as frictionless as possible if you will. And something that folks don't feel like it's a no matter the size or scope, whatever, a quarter million dollar endeavor with, you know, consultants and platforms and products, etc. We want to be that 365 day, 360 degree solution for you.

3:03 So, That's a little bit about me, but What is Iron Fort's ideal customer like? Who do you like what is your market? Is it is it med tech companies? Is it practices? Is it is it hospital systems? Tell us a little bit about, you know, who utilizes your platform and your technology today. Yeah, I'd say our our largest customer base now is in that med tech space. We have and I put medical devices in med tech as well. I feel like they operate sort of in that weird gray area that med tech does. For example, I was at a company Everlywell, now Everly Health. They're in that weird gray area of like, "Hey, are we Do we have to be a covered entity? Are we a business associate, etc.?" And when it comes to device manufacturers, they'll do things like, "Hey, we scan this and then transmit it to our cloud and then send it to a doctor." That's PHI. So, those are really the sweet spot for me personally.

These are folks that work really hard to build either a very, very good medical device itself, which is very difficult to get it to market and be able to, you know, sell it to providers or insurers, etc. But then also the tech space as well, where, hey, you have this really awesome software like an Iron Fort, but you know, you have this really awesome software and products. It transmits, stores, or creates PHI. What are you doing for it? These are the folks I like to focus on because that sort of innovation is what drives, you know, better health outcomes, lower prices, things like that. And so, those are the folks I love to work with. Obviously, when you have, you know, large hospital networks, they get very complicated. I worked at Advent Health in Orlando for some time. Fun facts, Advent Health Orlando operates under one Medicare license from CMS. So, they have like 14 hospitals under one Medicare license.

So, if you look it up, Advent Health Orlando is like, I think the second largest hospital by bed size. But that's taken into like account Maitland or Celebration, all those different ones. But also, they're the largest Medicare biller in the country. And so, those are very complicated sort of customers to have. And so, this sort of solution may not be the best one for them because they really have institution compliance programs and platforms, etc. because there's also a lot of operational risks as well. For example, a nurse walking away from the they call it the cow, right? Or walking away from their desk, or leaving a chart somewhere. So, there's like a lot of different factors that go into HIPAA compliance. So, I really do think like that technical space, med device is really our sweet spot. But also, you know, those smaller clinics, etc. They could really benefit from something like this as well cuz while they do have those operational aspects, it's not

5:48 Necessarily a Right. And I'm guessing even on the med device space, which is where I spent most of my career, you know, I know there's a lot of PHI that gets involved just being involved in the pacemaker business where, you know, there is patient registration data with devices that go into companies and all that kind of stuff. So, I'm sure that those are the types of companies, especially implant companies, that would really benefit from a technology like Iron Fort has to offer, correct? Yeah. No, I think that's very much like the perfect example. We have a customer now who the exact use case you put out there where it's "Hey, we have this implant or wearable device and it transmits PHI. We tried to engage with, let's say, it was a large government entity in healthcare and they said, 'We need HIPAA compliance. What do we do?

And we don't have any. We don't We don't know what that means, right?' And so, that's where we come in and are able to assist, get them to a point where they can answer yes on risk assessments of vendor risk assessments, I should say, um and get them to a point where they're not being held up or put on the back burner by these types of companies, etc. you know, that's really a friction point for the medtech, med device, health tech space, right? Whether it's whether it's a device or a wearable or an an app that's moving, you know, patient information or whether you're collecting data and patient information for an implant.

What When do you kind of go like Uh-oh, I I should be like I need to I need Iron Fort. I need HIPAA compliance. I need data compliance. How do you like become aware of it other than like somebody coming in and telling you that it might be too late at that point, right? Where you're breaking rules, you're going to get smacked around a little bit. So, what How do you discover with your own self like I need this? Yeah, I would say if you are someone in that sort of realm where in the healthcare space, right? Whether you're a a wearable or a software, etc. The second you are ready to go to market, have a lot of these things in place and ask someone about them. I think that is vitally important because the second someone comes to you and says, "Do you have this?" and you go, "I'm not I don't know." That's that's where you get into trouble, right? And a

Lot of this is very much, you know, an insurance policy and making sure that, "Hey, when we do get this opportunity, we're ready to go." But, I do think, you know, once you're revenue like ready to start generating revenue and have a outward-facing product, that's when you should really start thinking about these things and getting these things in place because it would be very hard to want to engage with a potential customer and then them say you need HIPAA compliance, etc. For lack of a better term, you need HIPAA compliance and then also trying to work with a vendor to kind of you also being the intermediary between your potential customer, the vendor, you're explaining to someone like Iron Fort, "Hey, they want this, this, this, and that." That it creates a lot of friction and confusion. And at the end of the day, I think, you know, would cause folks to just say, "I'm good, you know, I don't need this" type thing because I can go

8:52 To whomever who has something that may not be as effective, but I don't think also with today in place and we can get this moving right away. Healthcare is moving really fast and you have AI, you know, becoming involved in it. We have all these new companies that um aren't really doing anything medically, but they're also engaging with data and they may not actually be, you know, experienced in the healthcare space. So, like, you know, any AI company that's, you know, looking at data, extracting data, using data, seems to me like that would be a heavy heavy exposure on the on the HIPAA side of things and data privacy side of things. What does a What does an engagement with you look like?

So, you know, they raise their hand and say, "Hey, you know, I'm I really don't know what we're doing and we want to bring you guys in to help us out. What does that What do you What sort of exercise that you go through? I'm sure there's a You go through some discovery, you go through some design, you go through some implementation. What does that look like? Yes, great question. So, the number one thing I always ask is what brought you here, right? For the most part, HIPAA compliance is something if you're a founder in the healthcare space that you're aware of, right? But you don't I don't want to say you don't care about it, but it's not necessarily a major concern until it becomes one. And so, that's always the first question I ask.

Like, "Hey, what brought you here?" More often than not, it's, "Hey, we have a potential partner or customer that said, 'Hey, we want to work with you, but you need all this stuff.'" So, the first thing I ask is saying, "Hey, do you have policies and procedures, right?" Very basic, written down IT policies. And it's a yes or no. And uh half the time it's no, I don't know what that is, what that means, what I need to do, etc. That's fine. We can help you with the policy work, and we build them like Mad Libs. So, we leave some areas blank to make sure it fits your organization cuz you don't want to have hospital HIPAA policies for a med device or whatever it is. So, that's how we approach it, but then also we say, "Hey, do you have a specific platform or software that you use?" Yes or no? No, okay, great. What do you host it on?

We're hosting on AWS, 80% of other folks. Great, we can do the technical scan, we'll get you your policies. So, let's say they need policies, we'll send them the our policy suite all filled in for approval, they approve it, we get them all uploaded. Obviously, that'll pass our AI technical scan because we want to, you know, we wouldn't give you policies that don't pass those things, right? So, we scan our policies, then we'll scan your technical environment, and from there it all filters into that risk section, and really if you have all those things, let's say you even have policies, right? You get all those uploaded, you get you give us your credentials to access your cloud for a scan. We could in theory, and I don't want to say HIPAA compliant, but HIPAA position within an afternoon. If you have those things because the idea of HIPAA is knowing, identifying, and remediating your risks. And so, you know that your S3 bucket is vulnerable and they're not encrypting, right? Which is

11:56 Something we would find in your technical scan. That's fine. It's not necessarily that it's not that the problem. It's hey, are you working to fix it and how are you going to fix it? And make sure you write down how you did fix it. And so, we give folks and our customers the to go in there and create that process almost instantaneously. Where a company like Delve ran into some issues a few months back was they tried an end-to-end automation for SOC 2 and HIPAA and all these compliance frameworks, but the fundamental philosophy of the rule is that you need some sort of human intervention in there. Um, and so where we put that was like in the risk categorization portion. And so, it's you accept, monitor, reject, etc. But we we make the end user do that. So, we have that sort of human intervention. So, that's how we explain it to folks in sort of the, you know, revenue cycle process if you will of that engagement.

And so, we fully are aware that hey, after like the first month, 6 weeks, these folks will have their risk analysis be able to remediate these risks. We can get them in touch with service providers cuz we want to stay sort of away from the service and more so in the advisory realm if that makes sense. And so, send folks to get the, you know, if they need a service provider to remediate risks, that's where we, you know, would help them with that as well. But after, you know, 365 days, we come back to them and we say hey, we're ready to do, you know, set up your next risk analysis. Do you want to do it? Do you have any updates to policies, etc.?

Should you guys operate in sort of like an automated process or do you actually, you know, are you implementing like safety measures inside the system for the data privacy itself? Cuz I'm just like when you talk about getting service providers, that service provider would be is that a training suit suit like what when you when you say that like you're bringing in, you know, somebody that's going to you like to do the advising, but you like to have the service provider give us examples of what that might be.

Yeah, great question. So, that's where we'd call an MSP or MSSP to come in and help you remediate any issues you What is an MSP or an MSSP? What are those items? Yeah, MSP is a managed service provider. MSSP is managed service security provider. So, all the I if you're an IT nerd listening to this, you've probably heard those terms I just want to make sure you know, respect the dumb guy over here, so allow me to clarify. No, no, no. We the amount of Crazy, isn't it? Yeah.

14:29 The whole care in IT is uh mind-numbing. So, but but no, so that's where we really want to fit is in that we want to be your software. So, like I think Salesforce, right? So, Salesforce they that's a SaaS, right? But they've gotten so big Crazy, isn't it? now need Salesforce administrators that you pay six figures a year to operate it. It's a unbelievably fun model. I can't believe they were able to figure that out, but uh we want to give you guys the documentation and evidence component and say, "Here's how you fix it." And then you say to yourself, "Do I have the time, effort, ability to fix these?" No, okay, that's fine. We can send you off to one of those managed service or security service providers and they can help you with that. And obviously we get you, you know, very favorable rates, things like that. But that that's really how we want to manage it and make sure that you have access to

Get these risks and issues remediated from a like literal perspective and you know, not just saying, "Hey, we know we have these issues." Okay, that's great, which is what we do. We get you to that point. Hey, we know we have these issues. Now, how are you going to fix them? That's up to you, right? You can go through and organize your risks how you want to, but then the actual like practice of fixing them, that could be an MSP, MSSP, yourself, whoever. And so, it's all about just that paper trail and documentation, which is really all HIPAA is is a question of it's but it's for a good purpose and policies and documentation. been involved in the med device space for a long time, I know that we've always You can't remember a time when I after HIPAA came out that we weren't required to go through HIPAA training every year. And so, I I think, you know, the global med tech world is is you know, for the most part in a good

Place. You're removing all those potential frictions like sometimes people might actually call HIPAA a friction in itself, right? Like, you know, it's it's a place where everything kind of stalls and slows down and you know, you have a system that actually probably makes it pain-free and you know, allows you to move on and and do your business because again, that's a regulation is another form of friction in any business, whether you're in health care and banking is are probably two of the most highly regulated industries. Mhm.

You know, frankly, in a lot of ways from a customer or patient perspective, they're both very broken. And so, they're designed to protect, but they also just they literally can slow things to a complete stop, right? At the same time. And it's almost like they're they're designed to be confusing, if you will, because God forbid, you know, Joe Schmoes like you and I, we figure out how the banking system actually works or how health insurance works and how, you know, billing and things like that, which, you know, it's funny I you know, I always tell people, I'm like, it's funny when you look at you see someone on Fox, CNN, MSNBC and it's healthcare policy expert or healthcare czar, whatever, and it's like in what, right? Is it Is it billing? Is it Is it actual like healthcare? Is it administration? So, there are like 12, 15, 20 different sub-areas of healthcare that you need to be a genuine expert in, and I'm sorry, there's a lot of smart

17:39 People on Earth. I like to think I'm close to being a smart guy. No one on Earth has a big enough brain to fully comprehend and understand the end-to-end economics, if you will, of the entire healthcare system. It's just so big and broad and almost designed to be confusing, so people just go, "Yeah, it's fine." Okay, I guess I have a $90,000 bill for Tell me about that. You just mentioned AI, so tell me about AI, and you know, are you Are you leveraging AI in your business in any way, and if so, how are you?

Significantly. So, um on the back end, our policy analysis tool uses an AI in-in-house built AI function. Um as well as our technical skill, as well. From a like company perspective, yes. From a personal perspective, absolutely. I, you know, grew up in an era where I graduated high school in 2012. Hopefully, I don't date anybody, but um that was an era in which the whole like learn to code, and if you don't learn how to code and become a software engineer, you'll have no chance of getting into that, you know, top 1%, which is where everyone wants to be, right? I had no desire, and I don't think the brain capacity to be a software engineer.

I maybe foregone, there you go. Forewent, is that a word? I decided that Foregone, there you go. There it is. I foregone that and decided to go into economics and business type thing, but um I I think adoption, this is an opportunity for so many people to catch up to those folks who may have went into software engineering, cuz if you haven't noticed over the last couple years, you've seen all these folks who went they did coding boot camps, all these things. They saw their friends getting hired at these small software development companies in Silicon Valley getting paid $490,000 a year. All these crazy numbers and salaries for 22-year-olds, etc. Those days are gone. They've all been consolidated into the Fang companies.

Well, I guess Mang, but the Meta, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google, etc. All those talented folks have been absorbed by them. And so now, what we've been doing over the last probably 10 years is standing on the shoulders of giants, if you will, of the folks that wrote the source code, wrote all these things, and then taking pieces of each code and putting it into different platforms and services. Yes, you need to be intelligent and talented to be able to do that, but not nearly as talented and driven as someone who's building it from the ground up. For example, the folks who made Snapchat puppy dog ears, they were based out of Utah. They sold their company for $50 million just because Snapchat didn't want to have to pay engineers to figure out puppy dog ears, right? And I think what AI is going to do, and that was in the very much like technical world, right? Your software engineers and, you know, computer geeks, if you will. I think for folks like

20:28 Myself and maybe even you as well, Terry, where I don't have that technical background or experience or ability, right? But I have the knowledge of how regulatory compliance works. Or if I'm a lawyer, how the law works for mergers and acquisitions, etc., where Right. you know, let's say you're at Akin Gump, massive law firm doing M&A. Hey, these folks are paying us like $6 million in legal fees to do this. I know for a fact I can do all of this discovery and get this merger done Right. in 1/10 the time.

And I can charge a million dollars for it. And so guess what? You're going to have these folks who break off, these accountants, lawyers, compliance folks, you know, like myself, which I did, was like, "Hey, I can do this way easier." This like there's no reason for people to be charging, for example, a SOC 2 audit, getting back into sort of my world, 150 grand, or a HIPAA assessment. Uh we were quoted by a big four consulting firm when I was at Publix for a $185,000 HIPAA security assessment. That was the moment, and granted it took me about another year to really go do it on my own where I'm like, "I could do this for Publix for like a fifth of this and be very happy, you know?" And so, I think you're going to see a lot of that in the future now with AI, and it's going to happen a lot quicker than people think because you're going to have folks who

Are like, "Okay, why am I, you know, this associated law firm or, you know, a compliance manager doing these things when I could go into Cloud, or Claude, however you say it, say, 'Hey, build me a platform that does this and analyzes ABCDEFG.' And it'll do it within like 4-5 hours of fine-tuning it. You very likely could have like a a viable product. And so, that's where I think we're heading, and I personally I'm excited. I think a lot of folks my age, the 25-35 year old crowd, we should look for and be excited for these sort of opportunities. Um where it's like, "Hey, be entrepreneurial, go build something, you know, what's the worst that can happen, right?" And that's sort of where how I ended up in this this this world was like, "Hey, I'm 31 years old, why not, you know, take a risk and, you know, God forbid it doesn't work out, and let's say I spend 2-3 years on it, and I'm 33, 34, you know, MBA, 12-15

Years experience, and, you know, a failed startup." And I don't foresee that happening. It's I I don't think it will at all, but hey, I'm I'm fine, right? And so, I think a lot of, you know, people, especially, you know, around that 25 or 35 range, should look into that space and not be worried about, "Oh, I don't know how to code. I don't know how to make a website." Who cares? That's easy now. It's cheap now. And so, um that's where I really see AI taking us and I I hope people harness that instead of sort of becoming doomer, "Hey, they're going to take all our jobs and all this." That happened when, you know, uh the Industrial Revolution, it happened during the hardware revolution, the software revolution. Guess what? We adapted. We're smart. And, you know, speaking for us personally, like Americans, we will figure it out and, you know, lean into it, learn it. No, you don't need to learn how to build an

23:43 AI model. That's just turn on Claude and use it, play with it. Give it a crazy task to do and really just explore and figure out, "Okay, what is this? What are its capabilities?" And you'll be blown away within an hour. Do you think it it will happen a lot faster than that software revolution and definitely than uh the hardware revolution. This is something that Sure. You know, and I think Prior to 2030, things are going to work significantly better. or the digital revolution, I think it's one of the reasons why I got into the AI, you know, I'm in the revenue architecture business, but you know, I think a couple things with AI. Number one is it's democratizing intelligence.

So, the IQ part of the world, it's, you know, there are super IQs out there that will always be super IQs, but it basically is allowing the average brain to become above average. And everybody's it's democratizing and commoditizing the intelligence piece. What what's not being commoditized, it can't be commoditized, is the innovation or the social intelligence or the resilience or the ability to like overcome and execute and implement, right? Those are the things that are really going to be the unique aspects of being a founder, co-founder, running a business. Because, again, I think the the AI world is is leveling the field with regards to the intelligence piece. It's commoditizing it. So, that to me is, you know, so for a guy who doesn't have a super IQ like me, that that that gets me excited, right? Because it allows me to to do what I'm good at.

Uh you know, the other side of it is is that, you know, it's speeding up the world. And one of the reasons why I did get into the AI business is that I believe the impact of AI versus the internet is going to be 20 to 30 times the impact on our society, number one. The other piece, which is even What What's the other piece that's going to be even scarier is that that same 30x factor is coming at 100 times the velocity, too. So, what took the internet 30 or 40 years to get to in terms of change and transformation, you're probably going to see that same type of change within 3 to 5 years with AI. And so, that velocity is going to happen. And so, like when you think about You're not old enough to realize this, but I am, is that I remember the day when, you know, you There was no iPhone. Like, let alone like there was you know, there was no mobile phone, let alone an iPhone.

I will say I remember the first time my dad got internet on his It was a Kyocera phone. So, I I remember those days of the flip phones and Jitterbugs. And so, like that's the days when I was in medical sales and you actually used to pager and you got called and you had to go pull over and go to a gas station and put a quarter in the machine and make a phone call. So, you know, those are the kind of things where I'm saying that like you think back even 30 or 40 years and where we've come, like that kind of velocity is going to change. So, our society has to be ready for immense transformation. Um and that's what's going to be really disruptive. I'm not worried about people losing jobs, cuz I don't think actually AI is going to do that. I think AI is going to transfer where people are working. Like, I think things that are repetitive and I think things that are low impact types of work that you don't

26:56 Mind if an agent does, then it's all going to get pushed off. What the good thing is, it's going to allow the high impact to be work done by humans. Like the engagement part, the human to human connection part, which can never really be replaced by AI. As much as it's good, it's still not a human. And so, that's what's exciting to me. No, yeah. And that's why like the art arts and sciences I think are pretty safe for a while. You know, the creative the stand-up comedy, the ballet, like all that sort of stuff I think is safe for a long time because that is the human component of life. Like art is the expression of people, right? And it's AI is very much a just big math problem.

And it's taking the most common or helpful or easiest route to an answer you're looking for. You know, a lot of these industries and like jobs that we see are those types of things, right? You know, HIPAA compliance, it's gathering evidence and documentation. And if you have an AI tool that can go and find that is very exciting. And your job got a lot easier. kind of wrapping these this call up a little bit, but I do have one surprise for you. And I And so Um, not that you have a whole lot of gap between 18-year-old self and 31-year-old self, but like if you could go back and give yourself, whether it's graduating college or graduating high school, that pivotal turning right or turning left-hand turn moment in your life, what advice would you today give yesterday Mike?

I would tell him that you're not you're not behind. This is I think especially for folks around my age, I I referenced 25 to 35 quite a few times. We got put into a world where well, I guess grew up with a world that, you know, in our prime years of, you know, let's say 16 to 25, we had to watch friends, family, famous people on different applications, you know, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Doing all these amazing things and like being really hard on ourselves and being very like doomer of like, oh, I'll never be I'll never be a millionaire, be happy, or anything like that. And for me, it's it it'd be like slow down and just appreciate where you're at, you know, for me and like where I'm at now, I I took a massive risk and it's that's another thing is take risks. Like uh that's something I've always done. Um I'm a perpetual perpetual job hopper.

I'm always looking to I don't want to say bigger and better opportunity, but bigger and better opportunity. And hey, take those risks. Um go and you know, apply for that job that you think you're under qualified for. You know, what's the worst that can happen? There's a thousand other people that do. Maybe they see that you went to their school or whatever it is and you know, just do those things and don't be don't be scared, right? And take these risks and you know, at the end of the day, money is uh if you're relatively smart, right? You got a college degree, making money is easy, keeping it is hard. And so, don't worry about, oh wow, it's, you know, going to cost me a bunch of money. If you truly believe in something and think, hey, I have this figured out, I'm going to go after it, do it. And I think I was strategic about when I did it, but there's always a oh well, if I'd waited

30:10 Or if I'd done it earlier, that sort of thing. Don't worry about it. Just take those risks and believe just trust in yourself because you're a lot more capable than you can imagine. And I think by the way, I love the fact that you you're bringing this 25 to 35-year, you know, old perspective cuz frankly, as a, you know, a very old Gen Xer, okay, like on the fringe of boomer, but um I don't get you guys sometimes. Like I like, you know, the whole like job swapping and like, you know, but as a when I was leading you guys, like, you know, as a leader, like, it's the most challenging time to be a leader. You have like, you actually have boomers still working. You have Gen Xers. You have millennials. You have Zs. You have As. And literally, you have like five or six different age demographics that have different cultural alignments, different perspectives on what, you know, work-life balance is because frankly, I

Grew up in an age where there like, what is work? There is no work-life balance. What what are you talking about? Like, it's just work, right? And it's kind of funny cuz my daughter just graduated from Temple. And Go Alice, and she just got her first job with Deloitte, right? So, Okay. and the funny part as she was, you know, interviewing with them and I, you know, again, I've worked with, you know, I've hired McKinsey and BCG and Deloitte my whole life. And and I told her, I said, "You're going to get abused." Like, you you know, you you are especially as a first-year consultant there, they're just going to bang on you and you're going to be doing slides at 3:00 in the morning. And she's like, "No, no, no, Dad. They promised me that they have this new philosophy on work-life balance." And I was like, "Bullshit." I go, Yeah. So, guess who's doing slides at 3:30 in the morning last week, you know, like,

You know, Yeah, cuz No, it is funny. My my dad's an EY guy. Okay. That That That it's so funny you describe it that way cuz he is, you know, on the verge of retirement. He's, I think, got less than a year left. But it's very similar where, you know, coming out of college, that's what my friends were doing. And that wasn't too long ago. I graduated from Florida State 2016. I had friends that were UF finance kids that went to or accounting that went to all these wonderful, you know, places. And even friends that, you know, for the state as well.

32:40 You'd be out on like a Friday night and it's a hold on, hold on, I got to do this work and it's like, what? What do you mean? But, um no, I do see that that change coming and it makes complete sense cuz it's something, you know, my dad has seen it. It's not because like, hey, I want to work these kids to the bone kind of thing. It's just like, this is different, right? Like there is the change that's happening is pretty significant and I think it's happening a lot faster than people, you know, can realize. It's like your friend has a puppy or or gets a puppy or has a baby, you don't see it for 6 months and you're like, oh my gosh, this thing is like 10 times the size it was last time I saw it. Exactly. But the person who's sitting there is going, no, they didn't grow that fast, you know, that sort of thing. And so, I, you know, for me personally, you know,

One of the things that I think someone like your daughter or she, you know, should consider is like, hey, things are a lot different. I should probably focus on learning how to use AI tools, things like that. But, you know, one thing I think is important as well is like, hey, don't get hung up on the, um I guess, boo nature of job hopping. That's something I did that worked for me. It's something that I not many of my friends have actually done either. You know, I we came from an era, you know, us folks who are sitting cuz I'm right on the line of uh uh millennial and zoomer. Like I'm '94 birthday. People say uh uh uh millennial goes till '96, some say it goes to '92. So, it's it's really right in that sweet spot. So, like I didn't have Instagram or any of those, you know, social media things until like late senior year. My guy friends and I all thought Instagram was for girls and lame. You know, now it's everyone has an

Instagram, everyone has a Facebook, everyone has a Twitter, that sort of thing. And, you know, I think that, you know, I think did a decent amount of damage, if you will, to folks my age, men and women, where it's hey, we're constantly comparing people to ourselves or Oh my gosh, my friends and they're not even real, by the way. That shit's not even like that. All that That's all this Chinese on the internet, right? So. And And you know, you have these, you know, 100 let's say 100 close friends, right? You know, 20 of them are able to, you know, find a husband, wife, get married early, find a great job, and, you know, get settled down, you know, in their career earlier than the next.

Don't worry about that. Like that would be like the number one advice I'd give is like social media's fake. It It creates a illusion that you should be living the most hedonistic, like 100% dopamine maxing kind of life. And I just that's not how it is, right? Cuz like some people, they plan their vacation like growing up. My I had four siblings, two parents, so seven people traveling is a lot. We had our hey, we're going to go for Memorial Day and 4th of July for our summer vacations. We're going to do two or three days here, two or three days there, that sort of thing. But if you're 15 years old and you're 16 in 2026, you know, your dad could have a mom, dad, both of them could have really good jobs. You do that one vacation a year and you're going, oh my gosh, I'm poor. I don't have, you know, all this stuff because Susie was in Cozumel last weekend, Steven was in London, and Terry was in wherever. And it's like, hey,

35:59 You're looking at three totally different folks. And so it's like, hey, focus on what makes you happy. And if you're a risk-taker like myself, take the risk. There is nothing to lose. So if you're someone who has bought into like, hey, we're screwed as, you know, millennials, older zoomers, or whatever that 25 to 35 crowd, we'll never be this or that. Okay, fine. If you have that mentality, take risks. Do things that take you out of your comfort zone because I'll tell you I walked away from a very nice job, a very nice career path, you know, making very good money for someone my age and you know, that sort of thing, but like I was bored. Granted, I am I think and operate differently than most. I have that cliche entrepreneurial founder type mindset.

A lot of room There's going to be more entrepreneurs with AI than anything else. So, I think that's the the very interesting part and where where I really am lining up with your take the risk, you know, your advice to your 18-year-old self. I think that is like a phenomenal angle to take because frankly, the time to take risk is when you don't have kids and don't have mortgages and Yep. you're you're you're financially light, you're responsibly light, you don't you're not accountable for a whole lot of other people. And in fact, this is when you should do it and and experiment that way. So, I think that's a great piece of advice to give to, you know, the next generation kind of coming up as well. No, and I you know, just hope they live their best lives and you know, they enjoy. I always thought that was a cliche too. Like, but do what makes you happy. Okay, well, I I love sitting at home, you know, drinking and watching

Football. That makes me happy. Can't make money doing that, but truly find something that like you get up and you say, this matters to me. It's not necessarily you love it. Who loves getting up at 7:00 a.m., getting ready and going to work, right? Not many people. People that do are ones that think they're doing something that is beneficial and that, hey, this is something I believe in and that's, you know, millennials I think and even those, you know, older Zoomers where we really fit in, right? Is like, hey, we want to be valued. We want to be seen as like contributors and be told and it's not necessarily a participation trophy, but be told, hey, you're a valuable member of this team and like we're so happy to have you here. That's worth about $25,000 a year in salary to folks my age and I'm not kidding.

I agree. And having and having a purpose, too. Like, making sure that the work you're doing is meaningful. That's what I've learned is that, you know, you got to keep it interesting. You have to find ways to continue allowing them to develop and learn. And then, you know, having that great purpose is always I don't care what generation you're in. Purpose is a is a is a huge motivator and inspiration for all. But, Mike, thank you so much for being here today. I really appreciate it. And I look forward to Iron Fort bigger and better things. And we'll be in touch very soon, okay?

38:53 Yeah, thank you, Terry. Literally anytime. This was so much fun. And I really enjoyed our conversation. Please feel free to reach out. Or anyone reaches out to you about Iron Fort, let me know. And I'll be be sure to get in touch with them. Great. Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Terry. Have a good day. That's a wrap on Zero Friction, the show built around one simple idea. Remove the barriers and the revenue will follow. If today's conversation was valuable, please subscribe and share it with somebody who needs to hear it. That's how we will grow this community. I'm Terry Coutsolioutsos, a revenue architect powered by AI. Come find me at my website, myrevrx.com. And let's talk about what friction is costing you and your organization. Until next time, keep removing the barriers and keep the revenue flowing.