00;00;08;05 - 00;00;25;14
Speaker 1
Hi and welcome to your Tech Makeover, the podcast that gives you tips and tricks to help you simplify and get more out of the technology in your life. I'm your host, Frank Bravo. Today's episode is a little different than usual. This is a bonus episode, and instead of me talking to you solo like I usually do, what we're about to do is here.
00;00;25;14 - 00;00;43;16
Speaker 1
A conversation that I had when I was a guest on Josh elegies show. The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. If you are new here, welcome. If you end up liking this and you like what you hear, I would really appreciate it if you followed the show wherever you're listening right now. And a rating and review would also help other people find it too.
00;00;43;17 - 00;01;07;04
Speaker 1
It takes about 10s and it generally helps people find the show. So thanks in advance. In our conversation, Josh and I got to talk about AI as a tool instead of letting it drive. Why? Business leaders sometimes misjudge what AI can do and it can't, and what it can't replace the growing gap between what people who use the tool well and what people use to avoid them.
00;01;07;04 - 00;01;28;12
Speaker 1
And yes, we'll even talk about my Star Wars cabinet that came up as part of the conversation as well. I wanted to share this here, since it's something that you might not have been able to find on your own. I'm considering this a bonus episode for you on an off week between my regular every other week episodes. If you enjoy this one, look up Josh in The Thoughtful Entrepreneur for other content.
00;01;28;13 - 00;01;35;26
Speaker 1
He puts out a new 15 minute episode just about every day and it's really worth your time. So enjoy the conversation.
00;01;35;29 - 00;01;58;18
Speaker 2
With us right now. It is the Frank. Bravo, Frank. You're a technologist and you are the host of your Tech Makeover It's technology podcast. Focus on helping everyday people better understand and simplify technology. Frank, from your lips to God's ears. Thank you for the work that you do and I'd love to. By the way, thank you for joining us.
00;01;58;20 - 00;02;05;20
Speaker 1
Hey, Josh, thanks for having me. I really appreciate being here. I love listening to your show, and I love getting what other people are saying out of it as well.
00;02;05;25 - 00;02;20;04
Speaker 2
Yeah. Thank you. As now, as a tech guy, my suspicion and I know this, it's not no longer a suspicion. It's been confirmed. You geek out on some fun tech things outside of work. What have you been into lately?
00;02;20;05 - 00;02;44;00
Speaker 1
I do, you know. So at the beginning of Covid was when I started my podcast and I wanted something fun that I could just do on the side. And one of those things that I looked at was a full scale video game of one of my favorite, which was the original Star Wars game with the yoke, you know, not the joystick, not the stuff you can play online on your computer, but like a legit game cabinet.
00;02;44;00 - 00;03;16;06
Speaker 1
And I thought I'd go look at those, but they were super expensive. I found one that was reasonable, and by the time I went to go buy it, I. They were gone. They were all sold out. So a couple years later, fast forward, I found them that they were being sold again on the day they released it. I put in my order and if you're watching this on video, it's sitting over my right shoulder and I, I love just kind of when something, when a problem comes up and I just can't get my head around it, I'll turn it around, play a couple of games, and by then my head will be clear and I'll
00;03;16;06 - 00;03;19;00
Speaker 1
be able to get back into whatever it is you're working with.
00;03;19;03 - 00;03;40;12
Speaker 2
Oh, absolutely. You know, you know, for those down times when I, you know, I just need to reset the brain. Yeah. I see you got some guitars on the wall, like music, you know, just playing a game for a little bit, you know, just something where in that moment, I'm not thinking about work. Like if I'm trying to blow up the Death Star.
00;03;40;14 - 00;03;50;18
Speaker 2
You know, that last call is the last thing on my mind. I'm thinking about Darth Vader coming after me and, you know, going to blow me out of the sky if I don't. If I don't sink this Death Star. So.
00;03;50;19 - 00;04;07;06
Speaker 1
Right. Yeah. And then, you know, I do a lot of coding. I sit up behind my computer screen a lot of time, and then just some of those problems are hard to come by. The solutions and just stepping away from the computer is the way to do it. I have a ten year old labradoodle that has my attention a lot of the time as well.
00;04;07;06 - 00;04;27;27
Speaker 1
So I'll go outside, I'll throw the ball with her, I'll pet her for a few minutes and I'll be like, oh, I know how I can solve that. And again, it gives me clarity on how to come back to those problems. And that's what I try to do for customers and for people that are listening to my podcast, is just give clarity to tech problems that are out there that they don't have to be confusing.
00;04;27;27 - 00;04;46;22
Speaker 1
If you just take a step back and kind of think about it, or if you have somebody who can describe those problems in a very simple way to understand what the technology behind it is, so you don't have to know what everything is, but you are able to kind of distill what's important to you.
00;04;46;24 - 00;05;14;02
Speaker 2
I love this, you know, I hear this so often from folks who have been doing what they're doing for quite some time, just how much they value that processing time or that integration time, you know, you know, even if I, you know, I'm reading a book, you know, just to be able to set it down in between chapters and just think about, like, what I've been learning and it really helps me just make it, you know, integrated is the best term.
00;05;14;06 - 00;05;29;21
Speaker 2
So thank you so much, Frank, for sharing that. Tell me about and I also know that you work as a bit of a consultant to in it, but tell me a little bit more about your tech makeover and the work that you do for clients and others.
00;05;29;25 - 00;05;54;08
Speaker 1
Sure. So I've been doing, you know, hands on tech work for a long time. I was very lucky as a kid growing up, that we were one of the first generations that had computers at the high school grade school level, and that obviously very different than people today. But I was able to understand the technology early on, and then I had a special skill of being able to explain that technology to people who really didn't get it.
00;05;54;08 - 00;06;16;12
Speaker 1
And one of the first jobs I had was teaching the internet to seniors. Now, that may seem like not a big deal today as I approach those senior ages, but it was, you know, early mid 1990s where computers were just starting to show up in people's houses. We didn't have smartphones. And at the senior center, they were looking for somebody who understood the internet.
00;06;16;12 - 00;06;42;17
Speaker 1
They had a computer class, but not the internet. And I went in and was able to understand it or I able to explain it to them, because in my regular full time job, we had just gotten online in 1994 and were producing content for the web. So I was able to explain it to them. A generation that didn't grow up with technology, didn't grow up with computers in their hands, didn't understand what the internet was, and able to explain it.
00;06;42;17 - 00;07;05;13
Speaker 1
And I was told at that point that if I could explain the internet to a 80 year old in the early 1990s and they understand it, then that is a very special skill to have. And what I've tried to do is hone that over the years. And your tech makeover kind of came out of that, where I want to take very simple or very complicated ideas and boil it down into something that people can understand.
00;07;05;14 - 00;07;23;18
Speaker 1
For instance, like, I have an episode coming out by the time this airs, it'll already be out. But talking about the dark web, because so often people talk about the dark web and they're like, oh my gosh, my data's online. That is super scary. But when you really boil it down, it's really not as scary as you think it is.
00;07;23;18 - 00;07;46;10
Speaker 1
And so I've tried to explain things in a way that the normal person can understand. You don't need to be a technologist to understand it. And I think that it's important for not only people to hear that, but business leaders as well. I mean, there's a lot being written about AI, a lot of scary things about AI, but it doesn't need to be as scary as it is portrayed in the media.
00;07;46;13 - 00;08;18;07
Speaker 2
Yeah, well, you know, your audience, you know, includes, you know, just grandmas. I'm sure you know, it includes, you know, regular old people. And then, you know, I think about, you know, just higher level leaders and you know, how being able to manage our technology in our personal lives really allows us to perform a lot better. You know, if I'm not frustrated by something that's going on in my personal life, I could show up a little bit better.
00;08;18;07 - 00;08;38;02
Speaker 2
And of course, technology blends into obviously what we're doing during our day jobs as well. What are some of the you'd mentioned, you know, the dark web? What are some other areas that that you cover quite a bit as part of your tech makeover? And then. Yeah, yeah, we'll start there and I'm.
00;08;38;05 - 00;08;59;09
Speaker 1
Sure so, so two things. One is passwords. Passwords are one of those things that you can't go anywhere without a password. And there's a lot of people that share passwords with multiple people. Or they use the same password across multiple accounts. And I used to be super paranoid about this. I used to be of the opinion of don't write down passwords.
00;08;59;09 - 00;09;24;05
Speaker 1
And while I still have that opinion, the it is kind of morphed over time. It's don't write down those passwords and put it on a sticky note on your computer. So I don't mind people writing down passwords, but password managers are better because password managers, you now have one password that gets into everything, and it allows you to create multifunctional passwords that are not super easy to break.
00;09;24;05 - 00;09;43;25
Speaker 1
And you don't really need to to know what they are because your password manager is saving it. So that's kind of number one is that, you know, use passwords that are good, but you don't have to be 50 characters that you have to remember. You have to be 50 characters, that you have a device that is able to remember them for you.
00;09;43;26 - 00;10;00;10
Speaker 1
Then the second thing is travel tips. You know, technology, when we go on planes, when we're traveling from place to place, it's important to remember the things that are important for those technologies. I mean, in my house, I know I have a charger, I know I have a plug that I can plug that charger into if I'm traveling.
00;10;00;10 - 00;10;09;08
Speaker 1
I may not remember that cable. And now all of a sudden I'm at the airport, I'm buying a $5 cable for $50. And that's horrible. Literally, right?
00;10;09;10 - 00;10;18;23
Speaker 2
I literally just happened to my daughter and was stuck. And yeah, they those cables really are 40, 50 bucks at the airport is mind blowing.
00;10;18;23 - 00;10;34;15
Speaker 1
So one of the things that I do now that I travel almost monthly is I have a package of cables that travels with me. I don't need to worry about the cables that are here on my desk. They sit in my suitcase and I know that when I go, those those tools are going to come along with me.
00;10;34;15 - 00;10;54;21
Speaker 1
So, so just hints like that, you know, what kind of batteries can you bring on an airplane? That's a huge thing right now is if you have battery packs, you can't just bring any old battery pack on the airplane. They'll they'll stop you if they're of a certain size. And if you go to use it, they want it out in the open because they don't want those things catching fire, which happens from time to time.
00;10;54;21 - 00;11;14;09
Speaker 1
So it's those kind of things that I talk about that is yeah, the little old lady who has the computer problem. It would be useful for them to listen. I don't mean to harp on little old ladies, but, you know, but it's also everyday life. People that are traveling, people that are out there with their technology. You know what's good, what's bad?
00;11;14;09 - 00;11;17;15
Speaker 1
Wi-Fi, all those good things.
00;11;17;17 - 00;11;27;22
Speaker 2
Frank, I'm sure you address AI quite a bit. You know, here we are. It's middle of 2026. What are you currently talking about on the topic of AI?
00;11;27;24 - 00;11;49;01
Speaker 1
So I love AI. I mean, not to be mince words about it. I use it all the time, every day for lots of different things, and I use it as a tool. And I think that's the one thing that people should take away from AI. Yes, there's a lot of bad things that can do. Yes, there's a lot of things that are out there that that make AI not great in everyday life.
00;11;49;02 - 00;12;07;21
Speaker 1
But if you think of it as an a tool, as a virtual assistant, you know, I use it for code writing and it can write a lot of code and a lot of in a very short amount of time. That would take me a long time to do. Now, I would never push any of that code live to a site by, you know, just doing it.
00;12;07;21 - 00;12;30;01
Speaker 1
I'd make sure it's good and everything. And you should do that. In general, when you're using AI, writing letters with it, cleaning up vocabulary, you know, checking spelling, making sure you're using the correct word as long as what you're producing is what you meant to produce, as opposed to letting it give you ideas. I think that's the that's kind of the trick in using AI.
00;12;30;03 - 00;12;51;21
Speaker 1
I know a lot of newspapers are not allowing letters to the editors by AI written tools, and the reason is they're afraid that AI is going out and changing the meaning of what the person meant to say. And I always look at it as if that person is sending in the letter. They're the ones putting their name on it.
00;12;51;21 - 00;13;07;02
Speaker 1
And even if AI has changed it, I am hoping that they have read it and they actually understand what they're sending in. So using AI as a tool, not as the end all be all, I think is really the magic of what AI is going to be able to do for us as a community.
00;13;07;08 - 00;13;28;10
Speaker 2
Yeah, I think that, you know, there's such a big push back on slop. And, you know, that to me comes from inexperienced or just users that that aren't using the tool well, and they're letting the AI sit in the driver's seat. And I don't think that that's, that's, that's going to give you slop and slop. Looks like both.
00;13;28;11 - 00;14;06;00
Speaker 2
You know, we know what slop looks like visually. But the same thing happens with copy with whatever you're trying to do, social media engagement, like we're folks, are getting more and more sophisticated as to what AI slop and writing looks like. And let me just tell you, I mean, just I mean, I don't think I can say this warning big enough, but, you know, if you're using AI to represent you in human person to person communication, it really can come back to it's a huge net negative, and you could lose the trust and relationship of people that you've worked hard to build that human capital with.
00;14;06;04 - 00;14;34;26
Speaker 2
So do be careful. But on the other hand, Frank, I'll give you an example. My son looking for an internship. He's a mechanical engineer student and just finished his second year. And so, you know, using Claude, he has software that will automatically scour all of the best opportunities for him based on, you know, everything about him. His background is GPA, what he loves, what he's good at, and then it scours looking for opportunities.
00;14;34;27 - 00;15;06;16
Speaker 2
It takes his resume and writes unique versions of his resume for every single position, it strategizing with him on how to land each of these positions based upon everything that it's able to learn. It gives him all of the advice for the interview and how to land the role, and then just, you know, how to negotiate. And I mean, good luck if your children are competing for the same roles that my son is right now.
00;15;06;17 - 00;15;31;19
Speaker 2
Good luck. If they're not using AI and I don't say I just I share that, you know, I mean, he did this on his own and that's what we're you're not I like and I've heard this many times, right. Is you know, you may not get replaced by AI, but chances are looking more and more likely that you very well could get replaced by a human using AI.
00;15;31;24 - 00;15;33;03
Speaker 1
And I think you're right.
00;15;33;03 - 00;15;58;06
Speaker 2
You know, we've always talked about this. You know, the wealth gap, the education gap, the technology gap. And now, you know, there's this AI gap. You don't have to like AI. But if you choose not to use these enhanced tools, there's just going to be that that gap is going to become more and more pronounced. And, you know, you and your family members are not going to get access to opportunities that others will.
00;15;58;06 - 00;16;09;08
Speaker 2
And again, I want to be real sensitive to how I'm saying that. And I'm sorry if I said that in kind of a cold and callous way, but my son just happens to be someone I saw in the back end of what he was doing. I'm like, wow.
00;16;09;14 - 00;16;33;06
Speaker 1
Oh yeah, well, and that's a great example. I mean, so if you if you train your AI properly, it will give you a lot of great information. But I would guess that he's not turning around sending those letters out verbatim as it's being written. He sure, he has trained the AI to understand how he likes to write, how he he likes to express himself.
00;16;33;06 - 00;16;56;10
Speaker 1
I look at that in the coding that I do, and I, I sat through a demo of a new piece of software that I was thinking about using, and in that demo, there were probably half the people that had never even written a line of code. And that's what scares me most about AI is that in the slop that comes from it is, yes, you could do what I do, but I'm always going.
00;16;56;11 - 00;17;16;10
Speaker 1
I feel like I'm always going to be able to do it a little bit better, because I understand the concepts behind it. And this, I think, is where business leaders kind of miss the point on AI and they think, oh, well, I'm just going to replace this entire department with an AI bot to go out and do things, because yes, you could probably do that and you probably could do okay for a little while.
00;17;16;10 - 00;17;34;15
Speaker 1
But at the end of the day, you're going to end up with problems that you don't even know you have because you don't even understand the technology or the the reasoning behind doing certain things. So that's what scares me most about AI. And again, I am the first person to say that I use it all the time, I love it, I would not give it up.
00;17;34;15 - 00;17;49;29
Speaker 1
Now I'm way more productive, but you know, in the wrong hands and both from a criminal standpoint and a personal standpoint in the wrong hands, it can be a tool that is not used well and not good.
00;17;50;01 - 00;18;12;10
Speaker 2
Yeah. No, I agree, I think we do need good people to be, you know, to keep up with those that might not be, you know, at that level. Frank, listen, this has been such a great conversation. I think we all got a taste of the kind of content that you share. Let's make sure that our friend here knows exactly how to connect with you.
00;18;12;10 - 00;18;41;20
Speaker 2
First off, really simple to our friend that's listening to a podcast right now. Just search for your tech makeover. Frank is the host. He's got great content every day. You know, kind of advice that you can use. You just produced one as when we're recording this on travel tech tips how to use public Wi-Fi without putting your accounts at risk QR codes are they save really, really practical content.
00;18;41;23 - 00;18;49;06
Speaker 2
You know, no matter your level of of technical prowess? Frank, where else should people engage with you.
00;18;49;06 - 00;19;07;12
Speaker 1
So very easily? You could search for Frank Bravo. It's spelled exactly how you would think it would be spelled. And you can find me at your tech makeover. Or if you want to just shoot me an email, you can send me an email at Frank Bravo, and that'll get to me. But really, searching my name online is pretty much the easiest way to find me.
00;19;07;17 - 00;19;26;28
Speaker 2
I love it, Frank. Bravo. You're a technologist. You got a Substack. You're all over the podcast world. Thank you so much, Frank. Again, your website, your tech makeover, and then your professional services. Bravo. Looks like ITC. Yeah, for Bravo, IT consulting. Thank you so much for joining us.
00;19;26;29 - 00;19;45;22
Speaker 1
Thanks, Josh I appreciate the time. So there you go. That was my conversation with Josh Elledge of The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. And I hope you got as much out of it as I enjoyed recording it. If you'd like to hear more of what Josh does over there, look up the thoughtful entrepreneur on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for letting me share this bonus episode with you.
00;19;45;23 - 00;20;08;00
Speaker 1
Regular. Your Tech Makeover episodes continue back on their normal schedule every other week next week. And as always, if you have ideas for topics you'd like me to cover, please feel free to contact me via email at Frank at Yorktown Makeover. That's it for now. Thanks for listening to your tech makeover. If you haven't done so already. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast so that you don't miss an episode.
00;20;08;00 - 00;20;29;02
Speaker 1
And if you're on Substack, make sure you subscribe to the newsletter so you're alerted when new content is posted. You can always check out your Tech Overcome, where you can find more information about each episode. And if you want to find out more about me, please visit Bravo! Thanks for joining me. And until next time, I'm Frank Bravo, and this has been your tech makeover.
