AI and the Corporate Escapee: Turning Tools into Competitive Advantage with Michael Himmelfarb

Brett Trainor (: 00:01

Hey Michael, welcome back to the Corporate Escapee Podcast. It's good to have you here again.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 00:05

Yeah, thanks, Brett. Thanks for having me.

Brett Trainor (: 00:08

Yeah. And I think this, topic is going to be super interesting. And the one things I've learned over the years with this podcast is just go in with an open mind and curiosity. And when we had a little bit of a back and forth on email about AI and wisdom and the escapee world, you piqued my interest. So one with that semi vague introduction, welcome back. And, yeah. So what are you been up to?

Michael Himmelfarb (: 00:26

Okay, yeah.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 00:35

So I'm still building out my consulting business. I've been doing this now for eight years, unbelievably. And typically I have been taking on CXO roles. Usually I head of marketing, head of product, and in an interim phase where I come in, I help the company scale, grow, get their ducks in a row, and really operate a little bit more efficiently. And

I've actually been using AI a fair amount. And I think there's been a number of different use cases and I've become more comfortable and I think getting a lot more value out of it recently. as I've been thinking about it and using it a lot more, I started realizing that there's a lot of advantages to being more experienced in using AI than being more junior and replacing.

you know, trying to do, you know, replace some of that work. Yeah, so that's why I had really thought what I'd reached out to you about because I thought it was really interesting and something that might be a useful way to think about things for your group.

Brett Trainor (: 01:49

Yeah, absolutely. Because within the community, some of our conversations, I've been playing, I use it every day. I'm probably not optimizing for it, but it's becoming, definitely becoming part of the tool belt. And I know within the community, the folks that have escaped, are definitely curious and leveraging it as well. So yeah, I figured we could have this, this little open discussion. Definitely curious to see where.

where you're leveraging it and thoughts about how we as a collective could even get better with it. So yeah, no, I appreciate that.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 02:22

Sure.

So I guess what really got me started is so as you know, my background is in finance and you went to the same business school as I did the Chicago and the central, yeah, Tabuth and the central tenant of it is efficient markets, right? Like if everyone has the same information, you know, they're gonna make the same decisions. And I started thinking about AI the same way, which is you go on LinkedIn and someone will have a list of prompts.

Brett Trainor (: 02:38

Shout out to Booth.

Brett Trainor (: 02:43

Yeah.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 02:55

Here are the killer prompts for doing X, Y, Z. So if you think about it, if you're a, I'm just gonna say a brand manager for Coke, and you use ChatGBT and these prompts to come up with a new flavor, if you have a friend at Pepsi and they're using the same prompts against the same data step, they're gonna get the exact same answer. And so when you think about,

Brett Trainor (: 02:58

Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 03:19

Right, yeah, yeah.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 03:24

what it takes to actually be differentiated. really is really having this insight that you've gained over the years that you can bring to that as part of the discussion. And so that's what I really think the advantage that we as more seasoned people have in using AI and really getting the value out of it that more junior people who might not know what they don't know aren't going to be able to do.

Brett Trainor (: 03:50

Right. Right. Because that whole thing with the learning models, right. what chat GPT is pulling off, it only knows what it knows, right. It's not forward thinking in the sense. if people wasn't aware of some flavor that didn't exist, it's going to be hard to be creative thinking about, right, where the trends are going. know, that's one thing I've tried to do with my model a little bit is keep feeding in the podcast. Like I'll feed in this podcast episode when we're done so it can start learning more the way I think.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 03:59

Yes.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 04:10

Yes.

Brett Trainor (: 04:18

But it's yet to your point, it's gonna help. Anyway, I don't wanna cut you off at 100 % agree.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 04:22

No, you're absolutely right. think being able to intuit the future, have empathy, which is another big one. AI, it's a machine. And you know when you talk to people, can read the room, you have just intuition, you can understand how people might react, and an AI engine doesn't really do that.

And just being able to, there was actually this article I read from Accenture where they were talking about this. And one of the phrases that these two phrases that I thought were really interesting, one was intelligent interrogation, which I do all the time. So for instance, I'm spending a lot of time on pricing and product packaging for SaaS companies. And one of the gaps in that particular area is having a quantitative approach to do it.

Right? So I can ask the model, I use Claude because it's usually better statistics. I can say, hey, develop a model that does X. Right? And it'll spit something out. And I'm not a data scientist, so it's not something I can do myself, but I have enough experience with analytics and statistics that when something comes back, I can probe or I can question it. And it was interesting. I've had a couple exchanges where it will say, OK, this is the

Brett Trainor (: 05:19

Okay.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 05:49

you need a sample size of 50 to get this answer. And I'll say, OK, well, where'd that come from? And it'll say, oops, I guess I made a mistake. Actually, only 25. So if you are able to press it, really can enhance the results. Or it can prevent you from making mistakes. And I think having more seasoned experience enables you to do that, whereas a junior person might not really know as much about that.

Brett Trainor (: 05:57

Hahaha

Michael Himmelfarb (: 06:17

And then the other thing which you just alluded to is at this term they call reciprocal apprenticing. Which again, it's exactly with that example, which is you are. You're teaching the engine how to think like you right like you are imparting your knowledge on it. And so if I have this long exchange, I can I can I can guide the engine. I'm not going to tell it what to do. And obviously there's a lot of stuff I can't, but I can. I can teach it.

some of these things that it might not otherwise know from these softer skills.

Brett Trainor (: 06:49

Right.

Yeah, it's interesting because when you're talking about being able to probe, it goes back to sales 101 and a good discovery session, right? When you're talking with a client, they may think they have one problem, but if you keep asking enough questions, have the empathy and listen, you'll start to realize, right? It's the same thing as the chat GPT, right? It thinks it knows what it's, but until you can clarify or ask those right questions, you're...

Right. You run in the risk of it not being the right data. Right. Is that what you're. Yeah. Okay.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 07:23

Yeah, yeah. Well, just even knowing, you know, I remember when I first started against this is a finance example. I started, I was in investment banking many, moons ago. And I remember we used to generate these humongous Excel spreadsheets, know, these models of these eminent mergers and stuff. And invariably, you know, I was right at college. I didn't know what the hell I was doing, but right. But invariably the managing director within 30 seconds would find the one number that was wrong. Right.

Brett Trainor (: 07:51

Hell yeah.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 07:52

It's that sort of thing. It's the same principle with AI is that it can make mistakes because it's based on certain assumptions in the data it has. It's a probabilistic model. And there are going to be things that you will notice if you're experienced that you're going to be able to pick them out and correct it and kind of course correct it and make sure it's making the right decisions. I think so that's one piece. And I think the other piece is that

You know, more seasoned people are going to just be better at using AI because they, they, they know how to use it a little bit more efficiently. And an example would be, I would never have chat GPFT write a LinkedIn post for me. I would have it do a, I have it do a draft, right. And knowing full well that I'm going to have to rewrite it because it takes me forever just to get the first draft on, on the page.

Brett Trainor (: 08:36

same.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 08:47

Again, that's if you don't know any better or you haven't done it a hundred times before, you're not going to know how do that. You're not going to know how you can improve what comes out of the engine. If people like us are going into a company, it's really important to be able to stress that as a value that you bring. Because a lot of times,

Brett Trainor (: 08:59

Yeah.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 09:15

company will say, yeah, know, content, content shmontent. I can just get chat TPT to write these letters, or I can just get this junior person out of college to do it, right? They can just crank them out. And the fact is you're only going to get a certain level of quality. And if you really want to stand out, differentiate, have value add for your customers, it's this knowledge base that we have that we can, you know, train the engine. That's really going to be the added value. And that's, why I think in a lot of these

Brett Trainor (: 09:21

Bye.

Brett Trainor (: 09:42

Yeah.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 09:44

upcoming cases, that's where I think a real differentiator is for the more seasoned people.

Brett Trainor (: 09:52

And even scoping out the BS detector, right? Because you're going to see something that a junior person or business owner isn't going to recognize and go, whoa, that doesn't make sense. Where other people may just run with it and print, publish, and go, and it could be completely the wrong thing.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 09:56

Absolutely.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 10:12

Right, exactly, exactly.

Yes, and I have, I think it's kind of funny. Like I look back to, I was looking back at some of my examples and I mentioned the one about the sample size. And a lot of times it'll, the response from Claude I'm looking at right now is like, yes, you're right. I apologize for working backwards and I made this assumption and the assumption's wrong, so let's redo it. But if I hadn't asked about it, it just would have sailed through.

Brett Trainor (: 10:44

Yeah, no, I mean, I get them because I use the chat GPT Pro or whatever they call it now. And also perplexity because perplexity, think does a better job searching the web and pulling, but even there I'll ask it about a specific company that had a, an issue. think what madam or whatever the name of that company that, you know, did a survey of employees and basically anybody that came back stressed, they, they laid them off and whether that's a hundred percent true or not. was just trying to get dig into that more.

And it was pulling up articles on stress in corporate today. And it wasn't even that exact article. Right. So it was, yeah, it's, just, you're right. You got to be absolutely careful with it or, but I think where you're going and I like it is it's more of a strategic tool that we as solo business owners can use. And we can use it potentially more effectively than even some folks inside the company. Right.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 11:38

Yeah, yeah, think so. You're right. I think there are two parts. One is that we bring a set that is greater than someone who doesn't have our level of And we can make more of the tool and the output than other people might be able to. So we do have an additive effect above and beyond just the raw engine.

The other interesting thing I do is since I'm on my own is I sort of view AI as my co-pilot a lot of times. And there've been so many times I'm on a call. Like I had this client and one of the people there, we had a little bit of a, we didn't see eye to eye. And there's some times when I would be on the phone, I'd be like,

Brett Trainor (: 12:16

Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 12:28

Little disagreement. Yeah, yeah

Michael Himmelfarb (: 12:35

Am I going crazy? Maybe this person is right. Maybe I'm really misunderstanding it. On the call, I could just quickly ask TechGPT, I'm thinking this and I'm hearing this, am I crazy? And it will either tell me yes, I am, or it will tell me I'm not. And I think it just gives me the confidence that I'm, it's just being able to bounce it off another person, so to speak, your ideas.

Brett Trainor (: 13:01

Yeah. know, kind of like that. One of the things I'm doing a much more like my ideas will come out of, you know, left field. If I'm listening to a podcast and I'm at the gym and I hear an idea and historically when I do brainstorms, I've just got a running list and then maybe I'll get back to it. But what I've started to do is act a little quicker on those ideas. I'll plug it into JetGPT and basically say, Hey, look back at all of our interactions. So you've got a good grasp on.

the way I think and what I'm working on and those types of things and say, where would this fit? Is this an idea that we could leverage within it? And obviously the first response is going to be absolutely great idea. like, then no, this time be honest with me. Do you think this makes sense? And I have found it does start to push back on me now where, you know, I was looking at two different headlines for a post and I liked one and I said, well, be honest, which one would you go? He's like, well, that one I get why you're going there.

but it's too complicated. Your audience is gonna respond better to the simple, to the point. You're gonna bring them in much quicker. like, you know what? You're right, damn it. Getting too cute for my own good and it's just somebody that can call me out quickly. And again, you don't have to listen to it, but I, 100 % the same way. I'm using it in ways that I never imagined, but it's actually accelerating a lot of the things that I'm doing.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 14:08

That's really interesting.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 14:23

I completely agree. That's really fantastic example. think it's nice to be able to balance ideas off of someone at the water cooler. People always say that's the number one benefit of being not remote is you're in the office, you run into people in hall, and you can collaborate on little things.

In the absence of that, find a chat GPT or these engines to be very useful for that. Because it can even just spark your own thinking, I'm sure. Like, you know, can just get ideas on, you know, for the headline, you know, I looking at these two, I see what it's saying, and why don't I do this? It's a good compromise between the two, right? So it's really good for brainstorming.

Brett Trainor (: 14:54

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 15:07

Exactly. yeah. know if honestly, if my wife walked in and saw some of the back and forth, she'd think I was talking to a person, right? Because you start to, you start, when I first started playing with chat GPT, it was super formal, right? Very specific. Now, hell, if I have a typo or I just speak more in my own language and it gets the point, it gets what I'm saying, right? It's not confusing. It's learned to adopt that. It does sound like I'm having a back and forth or a chat session with somebody somewhere else.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 15:35

Yeah. So let me ask you this. Do you thank CHATGBT for its work? Or say please?

Brett Trainor (: 15:36

So.

Brett Trainor (: 15:42

Sometimes just out at just when I'm not thinking and just going I have some like, yeah, thanks. That's perfect. Right. Type of thing where I almost, yeah, maybe subconsciously, or maybe it's like, is it going to give me better answers if I'm nicer to it? I get, I don't know. Maybe you don't have to be nice to your chat. But the where I guess where I, when I do think about that is it's capturing my tone better. And if it knows I'm responding that way, then it knows that's kind of the way I would respond to

Michael Himmelfarb (: 15:50

Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 16:11

customer or prospect or in my writing would be more that way versus the overly direct. I mean, it'd probably be quicker if I was direct, but that's not comfortable for me. Okay. So I'm not a lump.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 16:14

Yeah.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 16:19

and send us.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 16:23

I'm the same way. I'm the same way. And I think there actually has been studies around this. And apparently, you get better results if you're courteous, surprisingly. But it might be just for the reason you just mentioned, which is, you know, fix up on your tone and it can kind of mimic you a little bit better.

Brett Trainor (: 16:33

nicer to your, your, your, your.

Brett Trainor (: 16:40

So where do you think, and this is a really interesting discussion. obviously we've got it working on the back ends, but how in the short term, well, let me give you one idea that I was thinking about before we talked. And then you actually took me another level deeper, which I liked. I want to dig into that is with AI being coming more, a really big tool for small businesses. One business owners may or may not be comfortable with they're to have to find somebody that knows AI.

But the biggest challenge I find with those businesses with anything that they're doing, they just don't have the experience in a sales or a marketing or a branding or a pricing type of discussion. So if you have AI, it's going to pull historically maybe from some company that doesn't align with exactly what this business is doing. And that's where I see the escapees, the Gen Xers that have decades of experience and wisdom, which I like that word you use to help point the jet GPT in the right way. So.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 17:30

Yes.

Brett Trainor (: 17:38

With that thinking, where do you see it on the flip side? I get it now from our side in helping us with our solo businesses. Where do you see the business opportunity?

Michael Himmelfarb (: 17:49

Well, there's many different levels to where AI can help. And you mentioned at the beginning, there's the time saving would be the lowest level. And then I think the ideation and the new ideas is really the upper level. And I think even small businesses sometimes don't even know how to get started at that lower level, right? So that's.

Brett Trainor (: 18:16

read.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 18:17

That's the first thing is find the opportunities to just get efficiency. Save yourself some time. Save your employees some time. And then as you get more comfortable with it how it works, then you can kind of work your way up the scale. One of the interesting things I've also noticed, and this happens a lot, it's happened a lot on the professional services side, is that, well, so.

Accenture all the way down to the the little independent consultants what what a lot of what they've been doing over the past nine months is they've invested in AI as a way to replicate a lot of what the junior people in the you know the consulting stack do right and so they're out there talking about all the cost savings they're getting so the the problem is then they go to their customers and you know they're you know these big companies aren't stupid they want the cost savings passed on to them

Brett Trainor (: 19:00

Right, right, right.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 19:14

Right? Yeah. So you see this humongous, compret margin compression because they, didn't sell it right. And so if you're a small business, what you really need to think about is if I'm going to be talking about AI and how I'm bringing it into the business, like, why is that good for my customers? Like, what do they care? And how is it a added benefit to them? How's it going to make me have a product that's better than what they, they have.

Brett Trainor (: 19:14

Right, % right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 19:33

Yes.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 19:41

And that's, think, how you really need to talk about it from a benefit standpoint rather than, yeah, now I don't have to do this because I got this engine to do it. If I'm a customer of that company, I don't really care. As long as it gets done.

Brett Trainor (: 19:56

Yeah, exactly right. No, that's a really good point. I haven't heard very many people talking about it, thinking all the way to the end customer words. I mean, which makes total sense when you said, I'm like, yeah, sure. But you're right. We usually think internally where the benefit's going to come. But if you can't, because the other thing, again, maybe that's just my old school thinking, even though we grew up through what three different technology evolutions and AI is here, there's no reason why we can't get comfortable. And the other thing I...

Michael Himmelfarb (: 20:05

Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 20:24

I have to keep reminding myself to you. mentioned earlier, small businesses tend to not be very fluent in the newest technologies. They're heavily focused on their company or their product or what they're building and depending on how big they get, right, leveraging it. So chances are, even if you're not certified in AI, you're going to have a better working knowledge of how it works than most of your customers. So I, yeah, I think, you know, I've been hesitant to think about, do we, all of us as escapees,

You know, go all in on AI. think a lot of them already are, which I think it makes sense because it's going to be a tool in the toolkit. And if you can use it right, it's going to be a differentiator, right?

Michael Himmelfarb (: 21:02

Yes, it is a tool in the toolkit. The other area that I think there's a lot of opportunity, and this may or may not be relevant for everyone, is the other way to differentiate what comes out of AI is what you feed into it. Right? So you gave this example of you feed in all the past podcasts and then, or your current business, and then it can, it informs the decision that's making. And for any business that has any

Brett Trainor (: 21:29

Right.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 21:32

of that or any data on their customers, they can use that to inform the AI to come out with unique or better answers than their competition. So there's just another way to another way. It might be a little bit. It's a little bit more advanced of a application, but it's just another way to think about it, especially for companies that are content or data rich. How can we help them leverage that up to create a competitive advantage?

Brett Trainor (: 21:56

Yeah

Brett Trainor (: 22:02

And so if I interpret what you're saying, it's get comfortable with the technology, what it can do. You may not have to be the one that programs it, right? Because, you know, I listened to a podcast today. I'm trying to, let me just pull up. I'm talking about more, you know, building apps, which is going to be mostly AI driven. Let's see. The company's called REPLIT.

And basically, can, the way this is now designed, it's advanced this far that you or I could go in, talk to a chat GPT prompt and say, what is the app that you want to build? And you tell it what you want it to do. And then it comes back kind of with a prototype and recommendations of how to do this. Then it goes and programs it. So that took a while for the app building to get there. But I think AI...

Michael Himmelfarb (: 22:47

Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 22:52

You will end up if we don't do it ourselves from a programming, it's not that far behind. can find somebody that can come in and help us build right based on what the questions we're asking and the data we're looking to extract. Even if it is pulling in all the data from a small business to help tell a bit better story. again, that was really long winded way to get to the question of, you advocating to get to the point where we able to, to code yourself with an AI or just get, okay.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 23:18

Not at all. No, no, no. that's a really great example. So if I went to that site and I said, want to create, let's say I'm in the business of, what's a business? Project managing. I have a project manager. I want to develop a project management app for lawn services.

Brett Trainor (: 23:38

Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 23:44

small businesses. Yeah, even better.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 23:47

Making that up. So I could go to that site and say, you know, here's all the functions I want this app to do. And here's, here's what it's for, you know, create the app. If I'm already in the business and let's say I know how I, I have a website that does it. Now I want an app. Let's just say, and I know how people are using the website. If I enter my, if I bring my server logs in that can inform the AI on how people actually do use it.

what they use, what their workflows are. And then the AI can use that to basically design the app. You're gonna get a way better result than if it just guessed cold. And so that's what I mean is that there's, if you're thinking through using AI to do anything, just think is there any other information that the company has that I can upload into the engine that's gonna make it produce a better result.

Brett Trainor (: 24:17

Right.

Brett Trainor (: 24:43

Yeah, no, it makes sense. And you got me even thinking because one of the things, even when I left, obviously you were one of the OGs of the escapees, being it out longer. But, you know, one of the biggest challenges for these small businesses is still the data, right? Side of it. And being it one, even having it too, let alone analyzing it. But if you could create a way to help build that foundation earlier, like

just so you know your customer information. CRM's, it's usually garbage in, or you've got three different data sets, the CRM, the ERP, and everything else, that it's really hard to pull that. Maybe we're getting closer to a point, and we're off a a little bit, but along those lines to help a small business create. So from day one, they understand their customers, what they're doing, what they're buying, how they're interacting.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 25:15

Yep.

Brett Trainor (: 25:32

versus when they get big enough, then we'll try to go in and figure out and rebuild and try to do everything.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 25:37

Yeah, and I think AI is especially good for that. Whether it's just the mechanics of merging data sets, which might be a little bit more data intensive businesses. But if you think about this lawn care business, like let's say I have a thousand customers in my lawn care business and I know all the different services they do, the spring cleanup, the fertilization, how often I cut their lawn done.

What I could do is I could, and I have it in QuickBooks or wherever. I could bring that all into Claude, which is the one I use, but any of them should work and just say, so here's all the information. Help me figure out which customers are most likely to want to do a fall fertilization that I should serve them and add or give them an offer for that.

it can do a very simple regression or correlation or analysis of a straightforward data set to help do that. that's the type of thing that is an easy way for people to get started where they don't really have to know much. And it might be, know, the people who live farther away from the lake do need more fertilizer than people close to the lake or whatever. I mean, it could be any number of things.

Brett Trainor (: 26:43

Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 27:01

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 27:02

whatever data you put in there, can look for signals or markers in the data for you. So you don't have to pour over a spreadsheet and try to guess. And it makes it, actually makes it very easy. Like I'm as part of my business, when I'm doing pricing, I'm trying to do to some predictive modeling around how you set a price for software that reflects the value that the customer is going to get. And there's a lot of different ways people talk about doing that.

Brett Trainor (: 27:11

Yeah, and even.

Brett Trainor (: 27:30

Yeah.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 27:31

so the frameworks, but no, but there's not a lot of information on how to actually do it. Like, if you, so here, like, here's what my price is. Like they, that's the, what historically has been sort of the art of the whole thing. And I've been able to use, these, AI engines to basically develop models that are, they're pretty good. You know, they're pretty predictive of what you should charge somebody.

or approximating the value that they're receiving from your service. I've had to feed in a lot of customer data to do that, but it's stuff I cannot do myself because like I said, I'm not a data scientist. can't program. they generate the Python code. I could basically create a little app that does this analysis and put it on my website if I knew what I was doing.

Brett Trainor (: 28:19

Right.

Brett Trainor (: 28:28

Right, well now you can with Replit, right? Just plug in and say, hey, I need this, this, here's the data sets I'm going to plug in. This is what I need to spit out. And what are the APIs that I need to do that? And I think even.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 28:32

yeah, exactly.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 28:39

Yeah, exactly. So it's really, it's easy. It's so easy to just say, here's what the, here's the answer I want. And here's the data I have helped me get there. Whereas before you had to kind of know how to get there yourself.

Brett Trainor (: 28:49

Yeah. And even just playing off where we kind of started this conversation with the wisdom is you're yes, you can do the regression or the correlation and figure out who's the ideal to offer these services. But then when you start looking at what are some new services, right? That's where some of the experience and the wisdom is going to come in to help make some of these forward looking types of decisions. So I think it's, like I said, I'm super bullish about, you know, Gen X outside of corporate and the value that we can provide into the

I'm not as optimistic within the larger organizations where we can play, but definitely within the small, right, that have been hungry for this type of expertise. Now with, you know, between AI and some of the solo business models, we can help these companies.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 29:23

Yeah.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 29:36

Yeah. And I think the other thing with AI is you can, you know, this is sort of like the teach Amanda Fish thing, right? Like if there's definitely a model where you as a consultant can come in, spend whatever, six weeks with a company and give them the playbook, right? And it's probably, you know, I guess there's pros and cons to if you want to have a business model of that.

Brett Trainor (: 29:55

Yeah.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 30:03

has these short-term engagements, that's a choice. it's obviously a lot lower commitment and risk for the company. you can have a just tremendous amount of ongoing value versus them thinking, if I bring this person in, I'm going to have to keep them here forever, or I'll never get available, do it myself.

Brett Trainor (: 30:18

Right. Or even a full-time hire, right? That's an 18 month commitment typically, right? So if there's some things you can do with partner versus, yeah, I said, think we're just at the, starting to uncover the opportunities within this space. awesome. Well, Michael, man, this, this time flew by and I love the concept of this episode. So listeners out there, long time listeners. know a lot of our episodes are geared towards use cases or.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 30:35

For sure, for sure. Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 30:47

You know what escapees are doing, but I'm going to start to blend in some more of the business, right? Applications. How do we grow? How do we look at things differently? One, because I'm super interested in these conversations. So I'm guessing others will be as well. So we may have to have you, pop back on here and Michael on a regular basis to, continue these conversations. Cause I do think it's, it's going to create a lot of opportunities for, for us are the ones that want to go after it. So, appreciate your, your time today.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 31:13

I agree.

Brett Trainor (: 31:16

What's the best place for if people want to connect and learn more about you where's a good way for them to find you?

Michael Himmelfarb (: 31:23

Well, so you can either find me on LinkedIn, Michael Himmelfarb, or my website is hg-partners.com. And so you can get all kinds of information there and connect with me there. I'm happy to talk to anybody to brainstorm. I think this is very interesting. It's an interesting intellectual pursuit. And happy to talk about it, if I can be helpful to interview your members.

Brett Trainor (: 31:42

Agreed.

Brett Trainor (: 31:46

And listeners out there that are in the escapee collective already, you'll see more of Michael. He's actually going to come on. We're working to finalize it to come in and help the paid community think through pricing, our own internal pricing, right? Which is where we struggle. So we're bringing in the big guns to help you grow your businesses. so Michael, as always, I appreciate the time and we will, we'll be catching up with you soon.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 32:05

Sounds good.

Michael Himmelfarb (: 32:09

Yeah, sounds great, Brett. Thank you.