Second Spring Design (00:00.898)

What our core focus is on is on these solopreneurs, these small business owners, these individuals, these people.

Second Spring Design (00:20.366)

Mm-hmm.

Second Spring Design (00:31.778)

Welcome everyone. My name is Dylan. My name is Christian. And welcome to the first episode of the Second Spring Show. Christian, why don't you tell us a little bit about what this show is going to be about? What are the kind of conversations you might be able to expect? And then we'll get into what we're gonna talk about today. I think those will be a little bit different. Today might be a little bit unique since our first episode.

Yeah, welcome everybody and and thank you for listening. This show is really our focus here is to build community around the changes that are happening in in small businesses. So we're going to talk a lot about AI. We're going to talk a lot about transitions of going through whether in life or careers. this is really focused specifically on the solopreneur and on the small business owner. Yeah, I think you can expect.

us to be talking to business owners, people you know, we're business owners and we'll get into who we are here in a little. but just giving practical advice as a lot of times are changing right now. and we want to bring in and talk to people and have conversations that people might be able to learn and gain a little bit of support and understanding of Apple

Things to do for their businesses. So what is Second Spring in general? Because it's more than just a show. Well, when we when we first developed Second Spring, it was around this notion of having an opportunity to do something different.

And I think that's something that a lot of us in this age, in this era, are really going through is this we're getting hit in the face with, you know, upskilling or learning something different or changing the industry that we're working in, or maybe becoming a small business owner for the first time. And we understand that there's kind of there's a starting point of your on one side of this let's just say a ravine, and you need to get over to this other side.

Second Spring Design (02:45.206)

And second spring was really developed to help be this bridge or this and that to help people go from where they are today to wherever it is they want to be, but very specifically around small running and owning your own business. Yeah, I think a way that we've talked about that's really resonated is how do you turn energy into profit? Exactly. Because we're all passionate people. A lot of a lot of people are passionate.

but then we get stuck at that in between in in that bridge part and don't know how to make it actually work because we do live in a certain you know, a structure in a society that you can't just do what you love. You need often you need to build a business around it for it to be supportive of a lot of lifestyle and things you need to do. Yeah, and that's actually how AI gets brought into this is

Me, myself, my background comes from maybe more of a corporate environment. I did a short contract work with Google for a while, worked for Amazon for over six years, and now I've been kind of doing my own ventures and running my own companies for the past six years. And so what I'm seeing in the market is that with the advent of AI and specifically agencai AI, it's giving, it's really leveling the playing field of where now small teams and individuals

Can compete at these really incredibly high levels. But it's not like there's been this instruction manual that somebody hands you and says, hey, this is exactly how you do it. And this is how you bring your passion to life and how you bring, you know, your energy to profit. And so Dylan and I were chatting, and we're both entrepreneurs at different stages of our life, and we both have different areas that we focused on. And we thought about like, how do we actually create this community to help people talk about.

real the world will change that we're all going and how it can actually apply to your life. I definitely think that community aspect of business ownership is one of the coolest parts. But often I feel like I've struggled to find those pockets where I feel like I'm not just like listening, you know, or or gaining advice from different people, but I'm also

Second Spring Design (05:09.304)

part of it and active in that learning process, which whenever I have been in those environments and in those communities, it's feel where I feel the most energized and I learn the most. and so a little bit like Christian was talking about a little bit of this background. I I my background's a little bit more with hospitality stuff and help actually the cafe that we're in right now helped open. and

very passionate about food, beverage, but also like culture and trends and the way I don't know, like businesses are fascinating because their ideas and their passions and their their people behind them. And so how do people that like express themselves and tell their story through the products and or the services that they offer is something that I'm always excited about learning, working with.

and so that's something that was really interesting for me starting to talk with you, Christian, is I feel like there was this layer of understanding of business practices that you know I didn't go to business school that weren't, you know, I wasn't taught these business practices. I think a lot of business practices get taught in business school, you in your MBA or in corporate structures. And I think you

What I've seen from just our conversations and everything, you've been able to apply s a lot of your learning from different projects, different businesses you've been a part of, and bring them into different scales. Like in because you've also done nonprofit and other startup work. And you know, there are these tools that you learned when you were like starting your career and in Google and Amazon.

that I think helped you understand all these other businesses at this ability to I don't know do a great job. but that's pretty inaccessible. Like I didn't I haven't had somebody to teach me those things. so yeah I think that's something that I'm excited to get into and talk about second spring. Yeah. And I think that that really you know

Second Spring Design (07:36.162)

Really comes down to like the the core of why this show and why we're sitting here talking. And it comes down to something that you spoke about earlier, which is there are real humans behind these businesses. And there's this opportunity for this prosperity art that I'm seeing with AI. And to be honest with you, I wasn't a fan of AI for a very long time, until about the end of 2025 last year, when I started to see.

the the technical application to be able to make this more accessible to the everyday person. so that anybody could actually take advantage of this. And to me, I kind of saw it as this great leveler or this great ability for people to more individuals to come into that prosperity versus like one or a few like centralized structures. Yeah. I think it's this like

Consolidation of power, right? I think we've talked a little bit about this, where power can either go and be more accessible and diverse and into individuals and they can do more with less, or it can go into the power of corporations where they also are able to do more with less and start relying less on.

actual human labor. So I think that that was definitely a trigger point that I think we saw is I mean the the current job market and everything that's happening in the corporations they're they're they're not needing you know the same sort of labor force. And you know what honestly in my opinion I don't think a lot of that labor force should need them. They they need themselves

And so but how do you then get there? Like if we have all of those people starting their own businesses, that's a totally different world than just a couple businesses in control. Right. And and that I feel like is kind of this this journey, if you will, that this show is working to take us on.

Second Spring Design (09:57.13)

It's to have these tough conversations about topics of small business, of socioeconomic impact of AI, and really kind of bring to life and share that all of us are kind of in this together and we don't know what's going to happen. All the leading experts in business can say that we're seeing layoff after layoff, our government is moving, in my opinion, very too slow, if not at all.

And and how do we create these support networks and this community to really be able to help each other? So that's one of my ultimate goals because you know when you're looking at going through there's a reason we call this second spring design, it's because we're building this with really a design or like a systems layer thinking on this. and so my I would love it.

If inside of our community there's this ability for somebody to go from never running a business or maybe in an industry they've never been in, and all of a sudden they're given the right tools and the right connections and the right resources that that actually becomes accessible and doable. And you start seeing kind of more and more of these small businesses. Yeah, I mean it's that access issue that we've I think we've seen time and time again. Right. access to resources.

is segregated, right? There's a huge group of the population who doesn't have access to the tools that they need. And that is I think really the the biggest thing part about AI that is exciting is the potential for it to be become more accessible to people to yeah, do whatever they they want to do. Yeah, and I and I wanna call this out of

We don't have all the answers, obviously. but and we are participating because we're seeing that inside of our current structure, there really is it doesn't feel like we're giving given a very great choice. and that choice is to adopt this into the current system that we're we're in. and if we don't, then it's like

Second Spring Design (12:16.588)

You kind of are gonna fall the wayside. It's kind of like when the internet came out and any business that didn't actually go online slowly but surely faded away. But we're actually seeing that happen in a very accelerated way. It's happening much faster than adopt copper. and so I feel like what's important for when Dylan and I have chatted is like how do we actually talk about again these hard issues? How do we actually help people and

you know, like admit that we're not like these AI super fanatics and we see all the issues, but we also want to help real people make it you talk a little bit about like the issues and concerns and definitely acknowledge that there are concerns. Honestly, I I think it's terrifying. but there are so many reasons why it's it's scary.

But it's also exciting. They're also like, I think we've we've seen and experienced what it can do. And so there is this like I understand that it it's it's here, it's happening, and it's gonna keep going. It it's happening in lightning speed. but that can be a lot. And so, Krishna, what are some of your like main concerns when it comes to AI? Where where I first go to

with AI really comes to what it is doing to our psyche. so I think a lot about cognitive offloading. I think a lot about the sycophancy that comes from the AI and what that's doing. that's where I spend a lot of my time dwelling on like how is this actually impacting us and also what is this doing to children that hopefully aren't if aren't using it.

until we have a better grasp of what this tool can really be used for. and and also like again for me, so cognitive offloading to me is when you instead of making a decision yourself, instead of owning that autonomy of your decision, you basically offload it to AI to do for you. and this is a problem that's growing very, very fast, where instead of

Second Spring Design (14:38.258)

again making decisions you're just trusting the AI to like run your life. And for me, as we've been building second spring and as we've been building like our product suite out of like Aventide and some different things that we can talk about another time is how do we actually put that control in the person's hands. So they always have that autonomy, they always have that ownership.

But then you use AI to to help you with the research or to help you get to the data points or the things that you want to be able to make that decision yourself, but not letting AI just run the show. Yeah. I think that's absolutely like a huge piece. I think there's so many things with AI that need to be taken looked at more seriously. and I think that is a

That issue right there I think is one that we can very much see present right now. and so it's you know, I I think we keep coming back to as we as we talk about what we want to be doing is like you know, AI should be human first. Yeah, like human the person should always be, you know, at the head of the the workflow, you know.

I did see this. I saw this crazy thing today on the internet where it was this AI and it was like AI hiring people to do the work that AI couldn't do. And I was like, okay, whoa. Whoa. Slow down. I guess the wrong pyramid. And I think that use case that you talk about in terms of like you have these things you want to do, then there's this

research layer, there's these different layers. That's been the thing that's that's been huge for me. Where it's made, you know, I have a lot of ideas and things and but how do I actually turn them around and make the things that I'm not aren't my s like natively my strong suit. how can I, you know, offload some of those those tasks.

Second Spring Design (16:55.91)

that are kind of monotonous and repetitive and things that I just am like my my brain is not pired hardwired to to do. But a robot, yes, I'm I'm comfortable if a robot does the monotonous repeated things. That does enter into like the issues when it comes to how it's showing up in

larger scale corporations because there is this whole labor force that is so vital to the economy and to people. and yeah if our our pieces those people should be be able to be in control of what they're doing in the first place not at the at the whim of a a sucker somewhere well I mean also that's my

my take of what comes to mind on these issues. But I guess what about you? What's going on in your head when it comes to AI and major issues? And you know, I I'm I'm saying this because it's you know what are what are some of the topics that you can expect us to get into more deeply. Yeah. I would break it into different things when where I my mind goes and

what I think will will practically be I'll I'll start with a couple of like concerns, but then I'll get into the applications that I think we'll like talk more about. Sure. and I think we we very much have a lot I I have a lot of concerns about just like I think a lot about the the greater direction of like where I think society goes as a AI continues at the rate that it's going.

with it continually being pushed to be more and more and more advanced. without much of I think general people's input I think is a concern. I think, you know, there are major environment concerns to be like that I think weigh weigh very heavy on us. as you know, I think we need to this is one topic that I would love to talk more about as

Second Spring Design (19:19.622)

As people s are finding better ways to go about the data center issues that we face, new ideas that are being brought to life that are better ways to go about it, I think highlighting those things when we see them is a huge thing I want to do. because I think that's that's really we need to be looking for solutions, not

cancellation. Because I think we're we're far gone down this path. And so I think the productive conversation to be having is like when things are good are happening and and advancements in in making it more sustainable product, we need to be highlighting those and like pushing for those. but then the things that I really want to I think we'll be spending a lot of our time talking about is applicable

tools that can help you turn energy into profit. and so what that might look like is it depends on your industry. I mean every business is so different. but how can you get hope help sort of you know drafting up fold emails that you hate doing or how can you help you with the editing

edit editing stuff that you want to do. There's cool tools or how do you organize or set goals or how do you like what how should you structure your business in the first place? Like how do you price it? How do you what are the key parts of your cogs that you really should be understanding in your business? and I think getting better at all those things

are great assets for AI. Like I think they are it makes knowledge of a lot of these business practices more accessible. And that's what's exciting. Yeah and and so what got me excited into AI candidly was this ability to create

Second Spring Design (21:47.426)

through agentic AI, more of like guided thinking as a product. And so how do we actually take the subject matter expertise of somebody in a certain industry who's been in a certain line of work or a certain sector of that? And how do we actually build out this knowledge base and this experience, pair it with agentic reasoning and give access to really everyday people.

to use that because what I saw is that was happening in enterprise or in big corporations, but it was, hey, let's actually level the playing field a bit and then democratize this access. And so how I've broken that down, and one of the products that we've built is an AI workspace called AvenTide. And really how you can think of that is really in three buckets. One is think, the next is do.

And the other would be reach. And so think is really focused on how do you have this really great thought partner? So if it's something that you don't know about or you need to do more research, like that's a really great way in something AI actually accelerates at it, you know, does really well at, which is doing that research. There's do, which is like the very basic monotonous task of like, hey, you know everything about my business because we've been in these deep thinking processes together.

Now can you like create me a quick spot analysis or hey, can you give me together some keywords for what we need to do? some marketing content, which I think you probably see a lot of ads about. It's not anything. lot of companies trying to do that. And then there's really the reach, which is how do you actually go from working internally, you're really thinking about this and you're producing these documents to help you make these better decisions, but then how do you actually go out there and reach real people?

and how do you do that in a way that is still true to your purpose and still is kind of this human first business model. But can you talk a little bit more about what both Second Spring and Daveide? Who is this all gonna be for? Second Spring is a company that that really has this vision or goal of

Second Spring Design (23:57.954)

You know, to start, we kind of joke about it internally. We say 50,000 small businesses, new small businesses is an economy. and so how can we do that and then repeat that and really kind of put a lot of this the a lot of this economic value back into the individual or back into the small business person's hands. And then we build AvenTide which is this agentively AI powered workspace, which is actually the tool to help people get there.

But I want to be really clear about something is that second spring is bigger than AvenTide and Tide, our our our product. And in this podcast, we're going to be talking about other products. We're going to be talking about other things. We're going be talking about it very plainly. And I and I want you to know that this is this is a place for these conversations to happen, whether you're using our products or not. we just feel like these conversations and these topics need to be need to be talked about. Yeah.

And you know, one thing that I think we keep touching on and who it's for, right? We talk about soulpreneurs, yeah, small businesses. But why do we why do we love small businesses? Why do we love soulpreneurs? People yeah. Why why do we like what's exciting about though? What's it what's exciting for me? For you, yeah. For me, honest

I think the uniqueness and the diversity in businesses are is what I love the most. the homogenization of products and services.

Kill my my s my spark. When I you know, I say you're walking down a street and you're say you're shopping, right? Like

Second Spring Design (25:56.526)

Typically you go into the fun, unique, cute store if you're just like walking down the street because it's different. And more different things I think adds a charm to this world that I think we're n naturally attuned to. Yeah. I think when we s like see a list of all next to the same product.

Second Spring Design (26:28.602)

it sometimes it it it is needed it has a place like especially in the cost of living you know there is a place for it but there is there's this I think native need of ours for unique people, unique businesses, yeah, all those things I think we're naturally looking for. So more of them

I wanna see more of people expressing themselves because those forms of expression

Are beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's you know, let's just call it what it is. Like the nine to five white collar specifically is dying. Like it is happening in the moment. I swear it's every single week there's a new headline of these big companies firing thousands and thousands of people. And so just as a number. Just as number. Yeah, they don't care. That's the thing that I think most people don't don't think about is these the a lot of times these corporations really they run legally.

Which that's to give as much short term profit to their shareholders as possible. So there's nothing in that that includes the individual or what's going on in somebody's life. And that's where I feel like there's this opportunity happening with so many people going through this they have a lot of skills and experience and they're now ready to start their own unique small business. and before there would be two

There'd be it'd be too hard to compete, right? Like these companies are too big. And now with AI, that is totally that is totally changed. and something that's important for me is to help more and more people do what we might call like purposeful work. So what is something that you actually care about that you actually want to do? And how can we help you turn that into a profitable business? Absolutely. It's I think that we

Second Spring Design (28:31.618)

keep certain like that is what we are trying to do. Those are the people we want to support because that those are those people are us. Yeah. Too. I think is what is why we're talking about it. Absolutely. And I think it's gonna s you know, start with that individual, like having this vision, having this dream, having this passion. And and then over time you might be like, hey, I I I started to build this thing.

Then you'll meet somebody who has hey, actually I kinda like that too. maybe we should do this together, not on our own. but I do see the the next generation of how business is done is really with these small teams, like one to ten, maybe one to twenty. But I think the average team sizes that we're going to see, specifically in the United States, probably all of Europe and some other countries, is going to be this huge boom of small businesses.

Absolutely. so where I think one thing I want to come back to, which we were talking about a little bit earlier, is this idea around community. Yeah. Why is community I think such a prevalent part for you? I think community for me in the in the sense of of second spring, second spring design, i is really to help bring people together.

To show them that they're not alone, that there are actually thousands, if not millions, of people all going through this same big transition and nobody really knowing how do we get to the other side. and so for me, it's kind of that that ability to to host those conversations to to kind of bring people together. and even if it's for the specific reason of small business.

I still think that's a pretty good reason as if it's tied to somebody's personal passion or purpose, then it's a good reason is that need to to start a conversation. Yeah, absolutely. I think there's there's something so impactful of

Second Spring Design (30:48.204)

I don't know, like it's it's support. You know, when you see other people doing going through similar things, like you know, when you see other people having the same questions as you, it makes you realize that you're not alone in I think a lot of the hardships that come along with it. A lot of I think entrepreneurial work is broadcasted as this glory. But

People who are doing it understand that that's what you post. There's a lot of suck. And you don't get that until you find the people to talk to about it. Right. Exactly. and so another area of second spring that we've been really passionate about is how are we actually working with licensed psychotherapists and people who understand some of the

Basic principles that might help people go through change. right. Like, you know, I was just listening to a fun Bruce Lee short earlier today, and it was like basically he was talking about how peace is a choice, and it's a choice that we can make. And a lot of times those choices come from knowing how to find ground self. so I think a lot of that is is is vitally important.

to to understanding to how do we all go through this transition together? What does it mean to actually open up a new business? How do I do that? and then you know all of the nobody really talks about all of the emotional things that come through that or all the psychological impacts of of of being a small business owner. Yeah. But when you're there and you're doing it and you talk to other people who are there and doing it. Yeah. It is

It's so supportive because it's so easy to get so down in the dumps when you feel alone with your business. But there's so many other people also pursuing similar things and ideas. And that's what we see with the side of second spring, in particular, I think is is how do we build that? So, you know, we should be having a home base for our community that we are looking on building. We are gonna have

Second Spring Design (33:14.338)

this place, you know, potentially start doing some streams and creating just this ecosystem where it's not just us and you, but it's you and you and us. Right. And this whole sort of room where we can kind of come together to bounce ideas off and also maybe say, this sucks sometimes. Sometimes you gotta get that off your chest. Yeah.

Yeah, I love when you call it a home base. and that's how we really see it, like making connections with real people, all kind of going through the same similar thing. Mm-hmm. I think that is gonna be a huge diff difference. That adds to like these layers. I think that we, you know, there's second spring and then we will have this product even tie. There are these different things. And when it comes to what our core focus is on.

is on these solopreneurs, these small business owners, these individuals, these people. And what we see with AI is that it can be a tool for these people to be be more competitive and also have more time on your hands and be feeling like you're you you have more autonomy in yourself because you're not as tied down to the monotonous must-do tasks. because

The work life is changing. And we want to, you know, talk about how those changes are affecting us, how we're making changes to better our own sort of situation and and life and that, but it's you know, people first and and because I think that's what we always come back to in and the most important thing with AI is how.

How do we keep putting the individuals at the forefront of our minds and our hearts? Because those are the people that yeah and yeah, perhaps AI can be a tool, perhaps is not helpful for them. And you know, we can talk about that. And yeah, I think all of that is real. People are real. People are real and they do that. yeah.

Second Spring Design (35:43.338)

And and that's really I think where we, you know, we if you really boil it down, we are building a support system and then we're building this support system for people to help you and and other people understand how to build kind of this human first business in this AI era. so I think that continues to be what's important to us is how do we continue to have these art conversations.

how do we continue to talk about topics? So in the future, you know, this is our our intro. and you know, you probably have seen much more focused topic discussion in the future. how do we do this? What's actually going on? What do these headlines even mean? you know, there's kind of a whiplash that I feel like happens with these announcements every what's real, what's focused, and what's actually applicable to you and not just like I think

I see so many headlines that like I get my hopes up. I'm like, that's cool and then it's like, that's not actually applicable to my life. And you know, but there's all this like hype and noise and it's hard to filter through like what's what's real, what's not, what resonates, what doesn't in terms of what I actually need as a as a basis, you know. Yeah.

Yeah, so I think that is how our our conversations will sort of shift. We'll sort of start seeing what's what's coming through. What are the what are the pillars of of building your businesses? How do you turn energy into profit? And yeah, I think that is those are the conversations you can expect. Yeah, absolutely. you know, we're we're kicking off our community, I think, with this podcast. So if you're hearing this now,

know should be a link in the bio or somewhere. Come join our community. Come meet us. We're gonna be talking, as Dylan mentioned, we're gonna be doing live streams and and really, really getting this this off the ground. And again, thank you for your time. I understand that that is a really valuable thing and I really just want to acchallenge you taking the time to to listen to us meeting as well. It is it it means a lot to both us and I hope to you that you guys will be able to

Second Spring Design (38:05.986)

Get something out of this w wherever you are, whether it's on a drive to work, coming home, or off into the mountain somewhere doing something for you. Which we also like to do. Perhaps there will be a little bit of mountain talk somewhere there. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks for watching. This is episode one. And yeah, stay tuned for the next one. Thank you, everybody.

Second Spring Design (38:41.506)

Mm-hmm.