Episode Transcript
[00:00:16] Speaker A: When families think about legacy, the conversation usually begins with the homes, savings, insurance, trust, medical decisions, and the people we want to protect. But our lives are becoming more digital, more connected, and more dependent on technology. Every year.
Businesses may rely on cloud systems, AI tools, digital accounts, intellectual property, automated workflows, and platforms that did not even exist when many traditional estate plans were first written.
So that raises a new question.
Are we protecting only what we own today, or are we also preparing for the way our lives and assets are changing?
My guest today is Todd Thomas, a recognized authority in artificial intelligence, energy innovation, entrepreneurship and emerging technologies.
He is the founder and CEO of Woodchuck AI, a climate impact startup focused on transforming waste into value and reducing landfill dependency.
He is also the author of Hyperscale and Unleash, I'm sorry, of Hyperscale and Unleashing Abundant Energy trilogy. Todd has spent his career at the intersection of technology commercialization and large scale project problem solving, helping leaders understand how emerging technologies can create both opportunity and responsibility.
Todd, thank you for being here today.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: Thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it.
[00:02:00] Speaker A: All right, so I've got a few questions for you. I'd like to start with one.
When you look at how quickly AI and digital systems are changing business and daily life, what do you think families are most likely to underestimate about the assets or dependencies they now have?
[00:02:22] Speaker B: Well, I think people don't realize the breadth of AI. AI isn't just one single thing. AI is this huge umbrella of technologies that is becoming ubiquitous in everything we do. So even if you aren't proactively going out to use AI tools, if you're just interacting with online, almost any technology today, you're probably interacting with AI. When you type an email and your email program finishes your sentence for you, that's AI. If you type something into almost any search engine and it gives you really detailed answers and additional suggestions, that's likely AI. So AI is everywhere, even if you don't think you're using it.
So right now, today, AI is the new technology and everybody's talking about it. But I think in a couple of years the conversation will change because it'll simply become part of the way every business does business. It'll be ingrained in everything.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: So for a business owner, what technology related assets can become critical to continuity even if they never appear on a traditional balance sheet?
[00:03:36] Speaker B: Well, I think there's probably a couple different categories there.
Certainly any company today needs to be aware of the AI tools. What are the technologies that are touching your particular industry?
And I think leaders need to proactively educate themselves and make sure that they are aware of what's out there.
Because if they aren't, their competitors certainly are. And you're going to lose ground to your competitors. At the same time, your customers are going to expect the level of service that comes with that.
Again, that can mean a lot of different things.
AI is so ingrained now in any financial transactions. In most customer service experiences, you're starting out with AI, and at some point in that service experience, you may be transferred to a real human being. But probably most of it today is done through AI.
So those things are impacting again every industry. So if you're a leader and you want to keep your company at the top of your industry, you need to be learning about these technologies, educating yourselves, and making sure that you're providing your clients with, and with your team really with the best available tools to provide the best value.
[00:04:54] Speaker A: So with all of that in mind, how should leaders think differently about intellectual property, data, digital access, proprietary systems, and automated workflows when they are planning for succession or for incapacity?
[00:05:13] Speaker B: That's a really big question.
AI can bring tremendous value in terms of workflow automation.
It's a great tool for editing, for proofreading. All of those things are absolutely true.
But how you set up your AI tools and what tools you make available to your team and to your employees is absolutely critical.
What we're seeing is lots of companies are leery of the added expense, and so they are buying limited AI tools that they're making available to their team.
So a limited number of people have access to company sponsored AI tools that are behind the company firewall.
The challenge with that is your employees are using AI anyway. If you don't give them the tools, they're going to use their own tools. The problem with that is if they are using tools that are outside of your firewall, any information that they feed into that tool becomes part of the public domain. So if they're taking proprietary company information, if they're taking proprietary company client information and they're using it in public AI tools, that information is no longer secret. That's not part of the public domain. That's probably the, the biggest security risk that companies are facing right now today.
The fix is you need to make sure that your employees are only using AI tools that are part of the company structure and are behind the company firewall. Because any, any interaction with, with public AI tools risk is exposing proprietary information, client information. It's a big risk.
[00:06:56] Speaker A: I'm Glad you mentioned that. I recently attended continuing education for solo attorneys and they talked about just that. People who are using the personal AI systems versus the business AI systems and even giving a thumbs up. You know, they said that sends your information out there into the digital universe.
So
[00:07:20] Speaker B: it absolutely does. That is true.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: So. So where do you see the greatest risk when one person in a family or company holds all of the technical knowledge, passwords, relationships, or operating know how?
[00:07:37] Speaker B: Yeah. If only one person controls all of that, the likelihood of other people going around them and using their own tools and finding their own solves and unintentionally exposing private information.
That's going to happen. That's absolutely going to happen. So no, you need to empower your team with the right tools, educate your team, provide the tools, get them up to speed on how to use those tools appropriately, and it can provide tremendous value.
The huge risk right now is if you don't provide those tools and you don't train your team on how to use those tools and they go out and use their own tools. It's just a huge exposure risk.
So don't limit it to one person. Don't limit it to your tech team or your cto.
Make sure that those tools are used throughout your organization.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. And so then what is one question a family or business owner should ask today that probably was not part of a legacy planning conversation 10 years ago?
[00:08:49] Speaker B: Well, I think you want to understand what tools your employees or your family members are using on a daily basis.
Like literally having them list them out for you. What are the specific tools they're using? And are they using a company laptop or a personal laptop? Are they using their personal phone?
We see that all the time. Someone is busy with their computer. You know, they got one or two apps or programs live on their computer and they have a quick question, so they pull up their phone and they. And they send that query via their phone. Well, if that's a personal phone, again, you're exposing that information to the public domain.
So people need to be very intentional about the topics they're working on and what machine they're using to to work on that project and what software they're using to work on that project. You need to be very intentional. So whether you're, you know, leading your family or leading your business, you need to understand exactly what your team or your family is using and make sure they understand what they cannot or should not use. Make sure they understand that you can't put, you know, our private family information or private business information into the public domain. You can't put that into chat GPT. That's just, it's a big risk.
[00:10:03] Speaker A: I like that and I like that information especially, you know, the risks that we keep needing to remember and, and making the list because, you know, when I deal with clients with probate, you know, used to be you could watch the mail for the bills and the things to see what a person had. And now everybody's banking online, doing things digitally. And so the same thing with, with AI, there are so many things that we could be shut out of or the family can and the business can be shut out of if something happens to you.
And so some
[00:10:35] Speaker B: of these digital payment tools, the history is public. So if you're, you know, you, someone can look up your history and see, oh, they, you know, they, they zeld 50 bucks to their buddy on Friday night and again on Saturday night and 100 bucks on Saturday night. They must have been out of the bar. Like that's all.
A lot of these payment programs, the history is public. So be aware of that. And you know, be careful how you're paying people.
[00:11:03] Speaker A: Wow, I didn't realize that. Okay.
All right, so, so, so what I want to carry forward from this first segment is that legacy planning cannot remain frozen while the world around us changes. And if part of our value now lives in systems, data access, knowledge or technology enabled businesses, then protecting the people we love may require us to identify those dependencies before a crisis exposes them. After the break, I want to go deeper into AI itself and the new responsibilities that come with delegating more decisions to.
Welcome back to Guided Legacy.
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I'm continuing my conversation with Todd Thomas, founder and CEO of Woodchuck AI and an author and business leader focused on AI, energy, innovation and emerging technologies. In this segment, I want to focus on what happens when technology begins to influence decisions that affect people, money, care and responsibility.
AI can accelerate analysis and automate tasks, but families and organizations still need to decide where human judgment, accountability and oversight must remain.
So Todd, as AI becomes part of everyday decision making, how do we distinguish between tasks that can be safely automated and decisions that stick still require human judgment?
[00:13:38] Speaker B: That's a great question and I think a hot topic of discussion these days. People are talking about that quite a bit.
The reality is AI is a software program, like lots of software programs before it, and it will do exactly what you tell it to do, but it's also exceptionally powerful. So you need to be very intentional and very prescriptive about what you ask it to do.
A great example is within the finance world. If you are a financial analyst, you work at a bank, a finance company, you can review, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50 transactions in an hour.
AI in that same time period could review millions of transactions. So that is a great use of AI.
Let AI take over and review all of those transactions and everything that falls within the norm, everything that's the same size as is expected, the same amount of money to the same people each time. Very routine, very repetitive. Let AI handle all of those. And at the same time, anything that falls out of that expected standard package, anything that's an anomaly, raise that for human review. If you know you're, say you're within a family and you're playing Netflix 1199 every month, and this month the Netflix bill is $200. Well, why is that? That should be raised to the family's awareness so you can look at it and make a decision. Was that an improper charge? Is it an annual renewal? What is that charge? But raise that up so a human being can look at that and make a decision. Same thing in a corporation. If you have, you know, thousands of repetitive transactions that happen every month, but one of them is out of the norm, it's much larger boards to a new payee. Raise that to a human being and let the human being review that and make an informed decision.
You can even ask AI to make suggestions for you. Like, this transaction is 10 times the normal size of a transaction into a new payee. AI, what do you think is going on here and what do you think the solve will be? And AI can make those suggestions to you, but let a human being review that and make that final decision.
And you can put those guardrails in place, you can set up. What are those limits that you want AI to flag for human review?
Again, be very intentional, be very prescriptive, and AI can be a great help in that way.
[00:16:08] Speaker A: Okay, so what concerns you most about leaders trusting AI?
Trusting an AI generated answer without understanding the assumptions, data, or the limitations behind it?
[00:16:23] Speaker B: Well, again, AI is really powerful. And if you aren't very specific in what you ask AI, it can give you answers that are beyond what you intended. And if you don't check that, it can, can give you incorrect answers. I think, you know, in the legal field, we, we've seen quite a few examples of that.
Legal offices, attorneys are using AI and they're having IT generate briefs or analysis, and they're, they're giving AI a lot of freedom to respond to that. And AI has produced a lot of hallucinations where it will create its own cases and cite cases that don't exist because AI doesn't really know the difference between what is factual and what isn't factual. It's just, it's responding.
And so, you know, we've seen cases where attorneys have gotten in big trouble
[00:17:20] Speaker A: because
[00:17:20] Speaker B: the judge says, look, you cited three cases in this brief. None of those cases exist because they were all AI hallucination.
So again, you need to be very intentional, very prescriptive, and you need to review the work.
And the more important that work is, the more critical that work is, the closer you need to review it and make sure it's accurate.
So, yeah, that's a big challenge. If you simply rely on AI and assume that everything AI gives you is right, it's not. AI makes mistakes all the time. AI hallucinates all the time.
So you can't replace your own judgment and you can't replace your own work with AI it will cause you problems.
[00:18:03] Speaker A: Right. And I heard even some judges have gotten in trouble too, so.
Well, my next question is regarding families caring for an aging or disabled loved one. Where could technology genuinely reduce burden? And where could over reliance create new vulnerability?
[00:18:29] Speaker B: Well, I think similar to the financial things we were just talking about in healthcare, there's a lot of repetitive issues that. A lot of repetitive bills. Right. If you're, if your loved one is in a care facility, the standard monthly bill will be the same every month. If they're on the same medications that never change. And a lot of those things could be reviewed and approved through AI if they're exactly the same, they're following the standard pattern that you expect every month.
At the same time, if you rely on AI completely to simply take care of those transactions and you don't notice changes in care, if medications are increasing or the use of medications are increasing, or if emergencies that are requiring response from nursing care are increasing, and you're not noticing that because you turned over the review of all those bills to AI, that can be a problem. So again, you want to put guardrails in place that say, look, if the care remains exactly the same and within these standard expected Boundaries, then yes, go ahead and take care of those bills. But if you see an increase in medications, increase in care, an increase in incidents or emergency response notifications, raise that to a human being to review and see what's going on. So it can be helpful. But if you over rely on that, you may miss signals that there's some problem that needs further attention.
[00:20:02] Speaker A: Okay, and so then what responsibility does a business owner have to document and govern the AI systems that increasingly influence operations, customer relations, and financial decisions?
[00:20:17] Speaker B: Exact same answer. Right? You need to set up guardrails so that you know, customer interactions, customer feedback, everything that is following the standard pattern. As you expect, those are great things for AI to take care of. But if you have a big increase in something, a big decrease in something, or, you know, requests or responses that are anomalies and outside of the norm, a human being needs to be involved in that to understand why are we seeing these anomalies? What's the cause? Is it a good thing or a bad thing? And how do we want to respond to that client or that customer?
But those are the types of things. Anything that's out of the norm, you want a human being to take a look at it and make an informed decision.
[00:20:59] Speaker A: Okay, and so there are a lot of similarities between the family and business concerns.
And so then how can families and organizations preserve accountability when technology makes it easier to say the system decided instead of identifying who is ultimately responsible?
[00:21:21] Speaker B: Well, the leader of the business or the leader of the family or whatever the organization is, is ultimately responsible. And if you're putting systems in place and you're putting technology in place, that's good, and that should be able to drive efficiencies for you. That's great. But ultimately you're the one administering the system. You're the one who chose the system. You're the one running the system. You're ultimately responsible. So you better have guardrails in place and you better be reviewing the results of what your technology is doing. Because if you were simply put something in motion and automate it and then let it run indifferently without checking on it, and it drifts and starts to make mistakes and starts doing things incorrectly, well, you're responsible for that. And you can't blame that on the system. Ultimately, it's your system. A system is just a tool.
It doesn't have a true thought.
And so yes, you are ultimately responsible. And you can say, oh, sorry, it wasn't me, it was the system. Same thing, it's your system. You are ultimately responsible.
[00:22:20] Speaker A: Okay, so Keywords I'm hearing a lot are guardrails, review, and personal responsibility.
So
[00:22:28] Speaker B: absolutely
[00:22:29] Speaker A: yes.
For me, I think the key point is that convenience does not eliminate that responsibility. Technology can help us move faster, see patterns and reduce repetitive work. But someone still has to decide what matters, what is fair, what is safe, and who is accountable.
Legacy is not only what we leave behind, it is also the standard of judgment we model when we are here.
Next, I want to look at business ownership and innovation as assets that may need to survive us.
Todd Thomas has built and led ventures at the intersection of technology, energy, entrepreneurship and commercialization.
That makes him especially useful for a legacy conversation. Because business value often depends on much more than ownership percentages or equipment. It can depend on ideas, systems, teams, data, contacts, relationships, and the founder's judgment.
So Todd, from your experience building technology driven businesses, what makes a company truly transferable rather than simply valuable while the founder is still active?
[00:24:14] Speaker B: That's a great question. And I think it really builds on the true value that you're delivering to clients.
I think when you are launching a new company and Woodchuck, my company is a relatively new company. We launched it three years ago, we're just starting our fourth year.
And I think one way to really build that value is to start with a problem that you're trying to solve. I think a lot of new companies and new entrepreneurs, you fall in love with a piece of technology, you fall in love with an idea, you launch a company and then you go out there and try to find a problem solver, try to find a client.
At Woodchuck, we did it pretty differently. We started with a commercial client that had a problem and we built a solution and built a company specifically to solve that problem for them.
And it worked really well. So I think when you are looking to launch a new business, build a new business, build a new technology, it's always good to start with that specific problem and let the problem define the solution. And I think that innately builds value into your solution and into your business.
[00:25:23] Speaker A: Okay, so, so how can founders identify the difference between a business asset and a founder dependent capability that may disappear if they become unavailable?
[00:25:37] Speaker B: Well, yeah, that's a good question. If, if the value that your company is delivering is based solely on the founder and the, the personality and the, the personal interactions of the, of the founder, that's, that's a pretty risky position to be in. And I, I, I would suggest that it's the responsibility of the, of the founder of the business owner to build a business specifically so that you know, yeah. If you get hit by a bus on the way home today, your business can survive, it can operate without you. And part of that is putting systems in place that can provide the value and an ongoing basis to your clients, bringing in team members that can provide that value.
So that. Yeah, because things happen to people all the time. And if your business is based solely on the value that the founder brings, when the founder is no longer there, the business is going to die.
[00:26:32] Speaker A: Right. And. And that happens so many times.
I'm seeing it in probate a lot.
So what should owners be documenting today about systems, intellectual property, strategic relationships, data and operational processes if they want the business to survive a transition?
[00:26:56] Speaker B: Well, I think it starts with building the systems and the solution and the value that you're delivering to your clients and making sure that your processes and your technology that you control and own, that you have an ownership structure that can be transferred beyond the founder. So, for example, at Woodchuck, we have built a proprietary AI platform. Woodchuck AI is our Woodchuck platform. And we use AI image recognition to help us identify waste and segregated and use that for its. For its best value, essentially turn construction waste into renewable energy. And we use AI to help us do that. So we built a proprietary platform to do that, and that platform belongs to Chuck AI.
So if, if I get hit by a bus after this interview today, Woodchuck still owns that platform. It owns the intellectual property behind that.
And so the company can go on, we can continue to operate and continue to provide the same value to our clients, whether I'm there or not.
[00:28:07] Speaker A: Okay. So, Todd, when innovation moves quickly, how do leaders balance the desire to protect proprietary knowledge. Proprietary knowledge with the need to make sure critical knowledge is not trapped in one person's head.
[00:28:26] Speaker B: You need to document everything and, and actually, documentation these days is, again, that's an area where AI can help a great deal. Right? You, you can set up so that AI attends every single one of your meetings and takes notes on every single meeting that you have, documents all that into a central repository. You can have it create action items out of that meeting for you, so that all that is documented and captured within the central repository of your business.
At the same time as you're building technology, you need to be taking the appropriate steps to protect that ip, whether that's filing copyrights or filing patents.
There are actual legal protections to protect your ip, and you need to be taking advantage of that. And for the most part, that means documenting, filing the correct documentation with the right organizations so that you are identifying your intellectual property, documenting that intellectual property, and making sure that the ownership of that belongs to the business.
[00:29:29] Speaker A: And if a founder wants the next generation or leadership team to inherit not just a company, but the ability to keep adapting, then what capabilities should be built into the organization? Now
[00:29:42] Speaker B: you want to build a culture of continuous learning.
So I think what I've heard a phrase lately that I love, a leadership superpower is not knowing everything, but building an environment where everyone can learn anything.
And then embrace that and empower your team with courses and study and access to information so that everybody in your team can learn and improve.
And whether you're there or not, your team can keep learning, keep improving, can keep improving the technology.
I'll give you another example. So Woodchuck, again, we're a three year old company. We launched and we were an AI native company. Our initial platform was based on AI image recognition.
Well, that was three years ago. And technology improves rapidly. So a couple of months ago, we took the entire company. And we're small, right? There's, there's eight of us, but we took the entire company through an intensive agentic AI training program. The whole company, not just me, not our head of tech, the whole company, we all went through that. And it was a team project. We went through that project together. We learned about agentic AI and we actually built new agentic AI tools as a team together during the course of that intensive.
So at the end of the intensive, we had these. The entire team had new skills, new ideas, and we have since then, literally been rebuilding our platform from an agentic AI first perspective, allowing us to really simplify workflows and improve the efficiencies of our platform.
And some of those ideas came from me, but some of them came from our sales team. Some of them came from our operations team. Someone came from our accounting team. Everybody in the organization has something to contribute and can bring innovative ideas.
So educate your team, arm your team with the tools they need, and create a culture where you welcome and embrace new ideas.
[00:31:40] Speaker A: Okay. And you told me during the last break that you had some pretty exciting news coming up.
You want to share with us?
[00:31:49] Speaker B: Sure, sure. So I just launched my new book. It's called Starving for Innovation.
It's actually my first or, I'm sorry, my fifth book.
I'm really excited about it. All of my books are about AI, energy and innovation, but this book has that same backdrop. But this book is by far my most personal book. We really use Starving for Innovation to tell the story of Woodchuck, the Genesis story how we launched early clients, early investors, and we really open up the kimono and show you how the sausage was made. So you get to see the early mistakes that we made, you get to celebrate the early wins with us. And you can really see Woodchuck as a template for launching your own startup and building your own business.
But ideally, if you read Starving for Innovation, you won't have to go through some of the hurdles that we had. Hopefully you can learn from some of our mistakes and be even more efficient. So if you're, if you are an entrepreneur or thinking about launching a company, or if you're just interested in AI and innovation in general, please pick up Starving for Innovation and, and give it a read.
[00:32:58] Speaker A: So where can we pick it up?
[00:33:00] Speaker B: You can get it Amazon.com just go to Amazon and type in Starving for Innovation. It should pop right up. You can also just type in Todd Thomas and all five of the books should pop up there. But if you're going to start with one book, I'd start with Starving for Innovation. I think it's by far the best.
[00:33:14] Speaker A: Okay, sounds good. I think I'll definitely check it out.
So before we go to the next break, what I'm taking from this segment is that business can look strong on paper and still be fragile if too much of its value depends on one person. A durable legacy requires more than ownership documents. It requires systems, knowledge transfer, knowledge transfer, governance, and people who know how to make decisions when the founder is no longer the center of every answer.
In our final segment, I want to widen the lens and ask what it means to build a future that is both sustainable and human.
Foreign.
Welcome back to Guided Legacy.
Stay connected to this show and every NOW Media TV favorite live or on demand, anytime you like. Download the free Now Media TV app on Roku or iOS and unlock non stop bilingual programming in English and Spanish on the move. Catch the podcast version at www.nowmedia.tv.
from business and news to lifestyle, culture, finance, law and beyond, NOW Media TV is streaming around the clock. Ready whenever you are.
So I'm wrapping up my conversation with Todd Thomas, founder and CEO of Woodchuck, whose work centers on AI, clean energy, entrepreneurship and using emergency technologies to solve real world problems at scale.
So Todd, you often speak about abundant energy and technology creating new possibilities.
What does responsible innovation look like when we think beyond quarterly results and toward the next generation?
[00:35:39] Speaker B: You know, that's a great question.
So many businesses today, particularly businesses that have attracted funding, VC funding, investors, they get very focused on short term results. What are this quarter's results.
I actually just read Eric Reese's new book, Incorruptible, and he talks about that a lot, that a lot of great businesses are launched and built, but as investors come in and put more and more pressure on quarterly results, lots of businesses, their core value drifts and they become more about delivering quarterly results than they are about delivering ongoing value to their clients and to their employees.
And he really talks about preserving the culture that launched the company and built a, built a strong company. And the importance of keeping your focus on long term value to your clients, not on immediate quarterly results. So I think we see that a lot. He talks about it in his book and I think part of that, again, it comes back to the leadership of the company and not succumbing to the pressure answering to those quarter results. You know, of course you want positive quarterly results, but not at the expense of long term results.
You want to deliver value to your clients first and foremost.
[00:37:09] Speaker A: Okay, and so then how should leaders evaluate whether an innovation is creating durable value rather than simply moving a cost or risk somewhere else?
[00:37:20] Speaker B: Well, I think every time you're looking at innovation or incremental improvements or any system changes or process changes really within your business, you want to look at what are the short term impacts, what are the long term impacts, what are the potential unintended impacts of those changes? And you really need to evaluate and think, are we sacrificing long term value to our clients for a short term win? You know, if we're, if we are looking to cut a budget item this quarter in order to hit these quarterly numbers, what's the impact of that budget cut on future quarters? And, and does that diminish the value that we can deliver to our clients? And if it does, you know, is it worth that short term win?
And I think that's, that's a temptation that too many businesses succumb to. And I think that's, that's exactly the type of thing that Eric Reese is talking about. Incorruptible, strong leadership needs to resist that short term temptation, that temptation to make less than decisions to deliver short term results when they should be focused on long term value to their clients and to the business.
[00:38:33] Speaker A: Okay, all right, so then what have you learned about designing organizations and technologies that can adapt without losing sight of the people affected by those changes?
[00:38:46] Speaker B: Yeah, so it's. When you are looking to build technologies, when you're looking to, you know, make improvements within your business, there's almost always going to be an investment there, either in time or in money.
But if they deliver long term value to your clients, then you need to analyze those and consider those. And again, even if that may cause a, a short term, you know, maybe this next quarter or two will not give the results you want because you are reinvesting in new technologies or new processes or new training for your employees.
If the long term payoff is there, if you do your analysis and over the course of, you know, 6 months, 12 months, 24 months, it's going to provide a net positive benefit to your clients and, and to your employees, well, then you may have to take a short term hit. You may have a bad quarter or a couple of bad quarters as you're investing in those systems and in those processes. But if it ultimately delivers a larger value to your clients and to your employees, then that's a, that's a decision that needs to be made. And I think strong lead, strong leaders are going to make the decision that ultimately provides the long term bigger value to your clients and to your employees. And I think another thing that's worth thinking about is how you take care of those employees, those employees that launch the business with you and you're building that business with you. Take care of your employees. One of the things that again Eric Rees points out at incorruptible, a lot of good companies, companies that remain good, that they, they fight that temptation to deliver short term results at long term expense. One of the things that they often have in common is they overpay their employees to keep those initial good employees happy, to, to keep them on staff. And they put programs in place to provide continuous learning so that they are, they are always staying challenged, they're always learning new things, providing more value to the business and to the clients.
And again, there is, there is cost to that. If you're going to provide the latest and greatest tools and you can be continuously training your employees to are costs to those things. But arguably those short term investments will pay off in long term value both to the employees and to your clients. So your employees that started with you and built this business with you, they're going to remain happy, they're going to remain satisfied, they're going to stay with you and they're going to provide long term value to your clients. So ideally those clients stay with you as well.
[00:41:16] Speaker A: Okay. And so looking at things on the other end for parents and caregivers or business owners who feel overwhelmed by the speed of technological change, what is the most practical way to begin preparing rather than reacting?
[00:41:34] Speaker B: So I'd say technology Scares a lot of people. And yes, technology is changing and developing very rapidly.
But the great thing is right now there are so many tools available to help you learn technology and to learn technology quickly, and a lot of them are free.
The the latest and greatest technology is agentic AI. Building AI agents to automate workflows and automate tasks.
You can go out and find free agentic AI training and tools all over the place.
Claude has a 13 class program where you'll go through 13 classes, at the end of which you'll be certified in agentic AI and that class is free.
Harvard is giving away free classes. Stanford is giving away free classes. MIT is giving away free classes. So if you are scared of technology, well, embrace it. Teach yourself. One of the great business advice I got years ago was identify your biggest weakness, educate yourself and make it your biggest strength. So if you're scared of technology, well, use all these available tools, use these free tools, teach yourself about technology and make it a strength.
[00:42:50] Speaker A: All right, good news. Good, good, good suggestions. I didn't know there were those free classes out there.
I'll look into it myself.
So when you think about your own legacy, Todd, what do you hope the businesses, the ideas, books and systems you are building will make possible for people who come after you?
[00:43:12] Speaker B: Well, I think the core mission of Woodchuck is really to dramatically decrease the amount of waste that we're producing and to tie that together with the incredible surge in energy demand that we have. Again, as I mentioned before, Woodchuck takes construction waste and utilizing AI technologies, we identify that waste, segregate it, and convert it into renewable energy. So to the extent that Woodchuck can make a meaningful impact on reducing waste and increasing available energy, we want to do that.
And I hope that we are building a company and a business that has an environment of continuous learning and that everybody that works with Woodchuck is empowered to learn and get better and improving.
So that again, if I get hit by a bus on the way home from this interview today, the business will continue to improve and continue to thrive and continue to deliver on that mission to reduce waste and increase available energy.
[00:44:15] Speaker A: Okay, well, we're going to make sure you don't get hit by that bus though, so thank you, Todd. My takeaway from this conversation is that legacy planning is not only about preserving what already exists. It is also about preparing for what is changing.
Technology, AI business models and energy systems will continue to evolve, but the human questions remain familiar. Who is protected?
Who can make decisions? What knowledge must survive?
What values guide the choices and what future are we helping create for the people who come after us?
Todd, for viewers who want to learn more about your work in AI, Energy, Innovation, Woodchuck AI or your books, where can they go for more information and how can they connect with you?
[00:45:14] Speaker B: Woodchuck AI. We're online, so just type in Woodchuck, not dot com. It's Woodchuck AI. And there's some great videos that explain the technology we use and how we turn waste into energy. So check that out.
If you're interested in the books, you can just go to Amazon, type in Starving for Innovation, and the book should pop right up.
If you'd like to connect with me, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm Todd Thomas on LinkedIn. Easy to find. Happy to connect.
[00:45:42] Speaker A: Okay. Well, Todd, thank you for being with us today. I think you shared a lot of great information, and I'm definitely going to look into your website and your new book.
And so in closing, I'd just like to say I'm Dionne Tracy Duckett, and this is Guided Legacy. The legal documents matter, the financial plans matter, and the care decisions matter. But those tools work best when we also understand how the world around our families is changing. The goal is not to predict every technology or every disruption. It is to build enough clarity, structure, and communication that the people we love are not left trying to reconstruct our intentions in the middle of a crisis.
