Speaker 2 (00:00.078)
are their initial reaction.

I hate it so much. I hate it so much. Because this woman just popped out a baby from her vagina and seven days later walked onto the court to a standing ovation from the entire crowd.

Okay.

Elaborate.

Speaker 1 (00:26.216)
What kind of precedent are we setting here for our young girls? Welcome to Married to the Startup. I'm Alicia MacKenzie, a wellness entrepreneur and digital creator. Alongside me is my amazing husband, George, the CEO who's always ready for a new challenge. We've been navigating marriage and running startups for over a decade, and we're here to share the real, unfiltered journey with you. Join us for insights and candid conversations about integrating love, family, and entrepreneurship.

This is Married to the Startup, where every day is a new adventure. And we're back for episode 25 of Married to the Startup. I am your host, Alicia McKenzie.

your co-host with the most, George McKenzie.

Hey, babe.

All right, so we're going to hop right in. And I saw this on social media and I had some really mixed feelings about it. And that is the head coach of the Ohio State basketball.

Speaker 2 (01:36.558)
No, I think it was Tennessee. Was it Tennessee? The Vols, think. Pretty sure. Tennessee Vols. Girls basketball court.

But then.

Speaker 1 (01:47.21)
Okay, correct.

So put that on tape. I was correct

I have Ohio on the brain because our eldest is heading there this weekend for a volleyball tournament. And she's talking to a couple of colleges out there. so the Tennessee women's basketball head coach returned to the court seven days after giving birth.

Yes.

Speaker 1 (02:20.802)
This drives me.

their initial reaction.

I hate it so much. I hate it so much. Because this woman just popped out a baby from her vagina and seven days later walked onto the court to a standing ovation from the entire crowd.

Elaborate.

Speaker 1 (02:49.128)
What kind of precedent are we setting here for our young girls?

Yeah, I don't know. think it's, you can look at it both ways. So I'll try to target it from someone who's not emotionally invested.

This is coming from a woman who's popped out five of them.

Yes. And what was the earliest you started working out again?

weeks.

Speaker 2 (03:13.28)
Okay. And I don't know.

I started training four weeks after I had Maddox.

Right. So part of me is saying it's not, you know, as long as her body's up to walking out there and you know, it's not impacting her health. Then if she's going to go out to coach a game for three hours, you know, I guess she's not breastfeeding or maybe she pumped. Maybe she pumped or maybe she has at halftime going in and feeding the baby. don't know. So if it's not impacting her ability physically and she can do it, it's a low impact.

Maybe.

Speaker 2 (03:48.01)
Exercise coaching a girls basketball team or it should be then maybe that's fine. The question in my mind would be What is she doing at? Practices and trainings like it's a full-time job to be a coach So did you just show up for the game and you're good and you're there as a token and the assistant coaches have been running practice and game planning and you're just there because you want to show face and be there or are you grinding it out at practice and doing all those things and

really right back to work after a week.

The United States has the worst system when it comes to prenatal, postnatal, postpartum recovery. And our postpartum or our birth statistics are terrible.

I think our statistics as a country in general are probably behind most countries when it comes to virtually everything.

And here's the thing, like it just makes me really, really sad that she felt like she had to do this.

Speaker 2 (04:48.654)
Do you think she, I guess that's your, you're projecting your thought. Maybe she wanted to, right? The other thing is like, I think you don't get to that position to be the head coach of a D1 powerhouse basketball team without loving it and being competitive and driven. And if you're all those things and it's your team and you want to go out there because you feel a part of it. And then, you know, at the end of the day, do you think, we don't know, it's hard to.

to tell, right? Is it her passion that's driving her to that? Or is it the fear that if I'm not there, someone could take my job? It could be, and you never know.

think it's the latter. I mean, we'll never know, but nine times out of 10, women don't want to go anywhere seven days after giving birth. Not easy.

Yeah, I mean, you're still like having a lot of womanish.

I mean, and here's the thing, you're still bleeding. Maybe your milk has come in, maybe it hasn't, but if it has, you are engorged as hell. You're uncomfortable, you're sweaty, you're emotional. There is nothing that sounds appealing about walking out of the house seven days postpartum.

Speaker 2 (06:01.87)
Not just walking out, having to perform.

at such a high level. And I think the one thing that made me a little happy is that women in the comments are also feeling the same way I am. Right? Like this isn't the flex that you think it is. Right. I think we're setting.

Thanks.

Speaker 2 (06:24.492)
Yeah, it becomes, I think it's similar to the adage that, you know, exists with executive leaders in companies, right? Which we always say, or they always, and I'll use an example from my own past is, you know, being at executive leadership meetings at Accenture and they're saying, you know, we want to have work-life balance, which we all say is bullshit. But anyway, they're talking about this thing, right? And to, you know,

As an effective manager, you have to set an example and set the tone. If you're sending emails out on the weekends, then of course you're implying implicitly to your employees that, you got to work on the weekends. then, you know, but at the same moment you say that, then they tell you, you you didn't increase productivity and you need to be more responsive and all the things you got to go to these happy hours. All the things that they told you to don't do because it increases work-life balance, you have to do anyway.

But I think to your point is this celebrating or rewarding behavior because she's the head coach that now she is kind of normalizing for her players that this is what's expected. Yeah. Or this is, this is what's celebrated. So now when you have your child, you should want to go back to work earlier and do whatever you have to do early because that's what's being celebrated. Yeah. Or I'm saying the players, the ones that are looking up to her are going to have.

even other basketball coaches.

Speaker 2 (07:49.528)
Children one day maybe. now that's like, hey, my coach came back seven days after. I need to be, what's wrong with me?

need to go train seven days after giving birth. No, you don't. And for the record, if you are a woman and you are listening to this podcast, after you give birth, there is a wound in your stomach, in your uterus, that is the size of a dinner plate. That is where the placenta was attached and then subsequently detached. And that is why you bleed for six fucking weeks after giving birth. Because this wound is healing inside of your body.

That is why you're supposed to relax. You are supposed to take it easy after you give birth. Now, I wanted to turn this to being an entrepreneur and being a mother, because it's really hard to have a baby and then have this company that you have to run. Let's say, okay, I just gave birth. How much time should you take off? What looks good to your employees? What looks bad?

Yeah, I think it goes both ways too. If you come back too early, what message are you sending employees? That, you shouldn't take care of yourself. You should just get back as soon as possible.

Or even even a father, right? Yeah, you had how many kids did we have between and DPS? We had three kids on DPS and I think you took what two weeks?

Speaker 2 (09:10.732)
No, we had four. Mavie was still DPS. It was the very end. He was. was, yeah.

Was he? he was. The million dollar baby. Yeah. So we went to acquisition and then somehow Maverick appeared. yeah. So how long did you take off as the CEO of a company after having, after...

Yes, celebratory.

Speaker 2 (09:32.886)
Am I a good example? No, don't think, I think it was a few days max. the longest was with Maverick and I took a week. No, I took two weeks because Accenture wanted me to take two weeks, but I only, I was back online after a week. Yeah, because I think, well, you're a terrific mother and the first two weeks, the baby is just on you nonstop. Yeah, that's great.

I don't know, are you a good example?

Really?

Speaker 1 (09:42.062)
Is that true?

Speaker 2 (10:01.326)
You know, the other kids were in school. So like during the day it was, I was just there to help, but there was not much to help with. And you didn't really want me to help. So I'm just like hanging out. So I just started working again after a week.

Yeah, I think maybe we're...

not great role models.

We don't, actually, I think the way we did it is great. Because like you said, I'm not gonna pump so you can have a bottle so you can feed the baby.

Yeah, and you still not sleep because you're not gonna sleep when the baby's crying. Yeah, it's gonna wake you up anyway

Speaker 1 (10:30.424)
Yeah, I think we had it. I would do it again tomorrow. Okay, we're having a baby. Anyways, so I don't think you're a good room.

Yeah, let's do it.

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:44.802)
Yeah, I well, I think it's up to the person at the end of the day. think setting that expectation is, you know, not everybody's the same. Everything and kind of like with medicine, it's with financial health, it's with physical health. Like it's not a one size fits all prescription for everybody. If your relationship is such that your wife needs the extra help, she had a cesarean, she had that, you know, a difficult childbirth and there things that really change the dynamics and makes you as a father have to be more engaged or one.

Maybe you want to be more engaged. I don't know. But the time should be built in for you. But the expectation should be that you have the ability to use all that paternal leave time, whether you choose to or not, as a personal decision and shouldn't be rewarded or punished. I think that rewarding it is the problem that I get is if you come back early and then you get the standing ovation coming back after a week that it rewards the behavior and says, everyone should live up to this model because now this is what's expected because this is what's celebrated.

versus she shouldn't have been booed coming out, it just should have been another day. Like if you want to treat it like another day, then it should be treated as another day.

And I I applaud her because good for her, but also I think maybe she might need to rethink some decisions.

Or maybe, I mean, I don't know, maybe she addressed it in her press commerce afterwards. But I think in her leadership position, it would have been nice for her to say, hey, this isn't for everyone. I felt the need to do it because I wanted to.

Speaker 1 (12:15.148)
Right. And the one thing she did, she, a quote from her was that I love this team. I ask a lot from them. So I am going to give them everything I have.

I'm healthy and it felt great.

Speaker 2 (12:25.708)
Yeah, that's too much. I think that's just saying that that's what's expected now. That's everything I have is I shouldn't be away.

and I should jeopardize my own health for the team.

And maybe it's because we have had some not good experiences from a coworker of ours, his wife passed away when she was, how many weeks postpartum was she? She was several weeks postpartum, but she had a random bleed and they couldn't control it. And she ended up passing away. And that was very close to the time that, my gosh.

several.

Speaker 1 (13:05.282)
How old was Ava? She was still under a year. She was still a baby. So I think just having that experience and that knowledge, that random and frequency can happen, it just makes things like this seem unnecessary. There's already so much risk into childbirth and to being a mother. Let's not add to it.

Thank

Speaker 2 (13:14.434)
happens in

Speaker 2 (13:26.456)
Yeah. that's, that's going to be, that's the problem with social media, think is maybe that story would have been a story for Tennessee fans. Yeah. But now it's a story for everybody. Yeah, exactly. And it's the same with, look at my bounce back. Yeah. Look at my mom bod or I'm working out, you know, 10 days post postpartum or I'm working out, you know, in my 10th month, I'm, I'm, the baby's going to drop any minute, but I'm still working out. Yeah. You want us people.

Yeah, because good morning America.

Speaker 1 (13:53.07)
There's a new.

that gets celebrated and then in your brain it gets burned in as this is what a normal woman does. This is what I should do. And then I, it's the same with teenagers comparing themselves to supermodels. Like I see that, that's the example. I need to be that.

Yeah, I think I just want our girls to know that everything is so individualized and if you feel great working out while you're pregnant, then good, continue to work out. But if you feel like absolute garbage, then go take a seat, sweetheart. It's not necessary.

Yeah, it goes back to the view of the world and not, you should live your life for you and hopefully your spouse or your loved ones, but you're living your life, no one else's life. So expectations that other people have on you are their problem, not yours. As long as you're living your life for you and doing the things that you want to do and need to do. I mean, obviously there's guardrails, but you shouldn't be living a life of

your own, not of expectations.

Speaker 1 (14:56.288)
Is it strange that we're like past the baby phase?

And now...

Right? Like it feels odd to me. Like we'll never have a postpartum period ever again.

Doesn't make you sad? No.

Can we get a puppy?

Speaker 2 (15:15.982)
We have puppies, we two of them. Just think, in the next decade or two, you'll have grandbabies. Yeah. I don't want that. Then you'll be babysitting and playing with babies and then when they cry, you can just hand it back.

Ew.

Speaker 1 (15:28.495)
yeah. sweet. Mm-hmm. OK, moving on. Let's chat a little bit about financial advice.

favorite topic.

Your favorite topic. You love money. I do. Yay. Money. Okay. So I was down some rabbit hole and I discovered a guy on social media. His name is, was it like budget dog or something? But somebody reposted something of his and I looked at it I'm like, this is interesting. And then I just, that's why I hate social media. It's such a time suck. But some of the advice that he gave

was interesting. And the one video that caught my eye was him and his wife have a $3.1 million net worth. And I am going to share 10 seconds of how he did it. And he subsequently listed out a bunch of different things from simple budgeting advice to advanced investing advice. And let's chat about it.

So first off.

Speaker 2 (16:30.476)
Yeah, I guess first of all, start with when I was in my early or late teens, early twenties, I've always read tons of investing books and financial books because I was broke and I wanted to not be broke. So I read lots of those books. And I would say that I don't think there's any profound revelation that has come out in the last 30 years that's different.

their derivatives of saying the same stuff. And you got Susie, Susan Orman and you got Susie Orman and you got Ramsey and you got all these people that are all

the

Speaker 1 (17:09.174)
Even though I think Ramsey's been cancelled.

Whatever. They just have different angles of saying the same stuff. And it's kind of like diet and exercise. Like I think the recipe for losing weight is pretty simple. It's diet and exercise. It's a calorie deficit. what's the way to save money? it's to operate in a deficit, to spend less money than you have. If you spend less than you have, you have a surplus that you can invest and do other things with. yeah, it makes sense. It's fairly simple.

It's fairly simple.

And investing is complicated, but it's as complicated as you make it. But I'd love to, let's chat about these words of advice and pearls of wisdom.

Okay, so investing 101 index funds.

Speaker 2 (17:53.506)
Yep. Hey, Warren Buffett said that many, moons ago. Hey, pick a low cost index fund and put your money there. You'll never beat the market. You can't time the market. You just consistently put money into a low cost index fund that mirrors the S &P 500.

Okay. Maximize tax advantage to count. prioritize 401k, IRA, HSA. What do think about that?

Yeah, mean, sound advice. HSAs, IRAs and HSAs have limits to income that you make. And then HSAs, I think it's like 5k a year or something. And you can set up your own, but some employers offer that as a benefit.

Here we have.

Speaker 1 (18:34.284)
Yeah, taking advantage of employer matches.

Yeah, but if you don't have that employer match.

then the point is moot.

Yeah. Or if you have high medical expenses, you know, HRA, HSA, all same. difference in HSA is it'll travel with you when you leave your employer because it's your money. But, you know, I would say if you have kids, 529s, same thing. You should be maxing out those.

Okay, dollar cost average.

Speaker 2 (19:00.686)
Yeah. Dave Poole loved dollar cost averaging. I wasn't, I get it. just, never, you have to be very active in it. Yeah. Right. So let's say you buy a stock at $5, but you, and you believe in the stock. The stock goes up and then it goes down to $3. So now you buy more shares at $3. So now your dollar cost average for your share, it was five when you bought the first one. So it's you buy five at $5. So there's $5 is your cost.

And now you buy five more at $3. So we'll have to do the math there. So 15 and 25 is 40, 10, so $4. you're $4 a share is now the cost. So you cost average down because you bought more to lower point. And then when it goes up, you make more money.

So this says up to a 63 % risk reduction.

Yeah, I mean, it's the risk when it goes down, your dollar cost average to get better. if you can't keep doing that, because eventually you can just keep buying your dollar cost average could be a penny. Yeah, but it goes to zero.

So what's interesting is that it says, don't try timing the market. It's impossible, but I feel like this is.

Speaker 2 (20:09.666)
Yeah, you can't. It's impossible.

Speaker 2 (20:13.838)
No, it's if you believe in the stock. Like if you're an Apple supporter and you believe in it and you're in the financials, when Apple goes down and you have the opportunity to lower your dollar cost average per share, take advantage of it.

Okay, this is interesting. De-risk by diversifying across asset classes. So, domestic and international stocks.

Yes. So this flies in the face of what he said the first piece of advice was, which is to go into an index fund, which in that case, they do all the shit for you. You don't do any of this. This is active investing. So all the apps out there will tell you the sectors in which you're invested in. So like I am tech heavy because I understand it. Those are things that I don't like investing in, things I don't understand or companies I don't know. when you want to diversify your asset class, you would have

X percent in IT or software companies have X percent in oil and gas, housing, and then you do international emerging markets versus, and you can get index ones in emerging markets. That's such a show. is. So, no, I get it. I mean, that seems to be, it's a very, those pieces of advice are, they are, but they, have to be active.

Maybe you should go into oil. Let's be a land man.

Speaker 1 (21:21.442)
Let's keep going.

Speaker 1 (21:29.39)
They're very nuanced.

engaged in it you have to understand it, which most people

I was going to say, don't think the general population understands this.

No, and you'll dollar, let's say if you're in an index fund, if you contribute every two weeks or every month, you're going to dollar cost average because you're going to buy it whenever you enter the market. It could be up or down and you're going to buy it and it'll blend out.

So annual rebalancing. Yes.

Speaker 2 (21:54.892)
Yes. Yeah. And there's funds that do this for you. Like we've invested in ones before. think there's, can't remember the name of ours, but there are funds that do this dynamically for you. at the end of the year or end of the quarter, will. Indect, they will sell off losers to get the taxed harvesting of the losses. Right. And then they'll reinvest later. So you sell off some losers, you know,

Maybe you sell some winners and then you reinvest that in the same stocks and then the, you know, it'll, the application that they use on the backend does that dynamically for you and stays within the realms of, you know, how long your hold period is, et cetera, to make sure that you're reaping the rewards of the tax harvest to lose and then, you know, continue to ride your winners.

And then optimizing investment accounts, Like, mastering the 401k, the mega backdoor, Roth, maximize HSA, all that stuff. We don't have an HSA.

do not.

a solo 401k for self-employed individuals and then

Speaker 2 (23:03.95)
Yeah, I mean there's another thing too. So it's like the self-employed 401k, but then there's like a 40521. There's something else that you can invest in as an entrepreneur. I'll have to look that up. It's not a 401k. Because there were some tax advantages, especially if you're a LLC, single member, you could defer up to X amount of profit. can't have to research it. I think it was like 40k of profit you could dump into this tax-free investment fund. you're not, because...

as a single member LLC, most times you don't have a 401k and don't have employee employer match. So you're allowed to kind of get that same tax treatment via this vehicle.

So I do think there are three pieces of simplified information that he shared. if you're going to do anything, like this should be number one. And that is a 72 hour rule for impulse buys. So three days.

I have like a three month rule for all buys.

Three days. And especially when it comes to being on social media and being on TikTok, they are so good at selling you shit you don't need. Put it in your cart and wait three days. If you can master this, it's delayed gratification. That is going to be like the number one tool to keep you from spending money you don't have. Anyway, so, and it's making sure that you don't keep buying shit you don't need.

Speaker 2 (24:08.492)
it in your car and wait.

Speaker 2 (24:28.234)
Yeah, it's the candy at the checkout register. It's that impulse. Do you need the candy? No, but you're there and it's right there and the register is right there. I got to swipe it.

So I think if you can delay the gratification, that will only lead to you spending less. That should be your number one goal, delay gratification when it comes to purchases. But then he also has a HYSA versus a checking account.

Yeah, depends. Some high yield savings accounts have withdrawal limits or frequency withdrawal limits. Yeah, Yeah, look into all that. Yeah, there's good and bad.

There's a reason for it though.

I don't know. think HYSA, if you want to go on vacation, open one and start dumping money into it.

Speaker 2 (25:09.134)
Sure. mean, if you understood your cash flows, you'd only keep your op... Just like a business, right? You have an operating account and you have your savings account in the business and your operating account would only have enough cash to cover operating expenses that are predictable and you know, like, need... 10K needs to be in my operating account this week. So that's all that's in there. Yeah. And the rest is in your savings account that's earning interest. And then next week when you need 12K, you move 12K over, but just enough to pay the bills. You don't have a surplus...

of hundreds of thousands sitting in your operating account, you're moving money back and forth.

Yeah. And then the last one is found money techniques. And he said he saved 2100 a year doing stuff like this, but it's using cash back credit cards to your advantage and then selling stuff you don't need and then moving states or cities with lower mortgage rates or rent.

Yeah, I mean it's it's budgeting 101.

It is budgeting 101. Some people, what is the national average credit card debt?

Speaker 2 (26:10.412)
I know, I guess I'm gonna pick apart a couple of those things. So if you have nothing that ties you to a high cost of living area, then sure, you should move. It's like when the water dries up, you move somewhere where there's water. It's hard, like you become indoctrinated into the area in which you're in and it's really hard to leave and change, humans fear change, right? And it's hard.

cost of living.

Speaker 1 (26:26.99)
It to be really hard concept for people.

Speaker 2 (26:39.138)
It's hard to do, but yeah, if you could move to a low cost area and it fits the lifestyle and the life that you want to lead. If you boil it down to what makes me happy or nothing makes me happy. What are the things that are making me unhappy? And if the things your area that you live in is not making you unhappy, then you don't need to change. if you're, you know, being poor is making you unhappy, right? Because you're spending too much money on your rent and you know, cost of living then yeah.

eliminate those things that are making you unhappy. So let's say that moving to a lower cost of living area for sure. But most of the time when you move to that lower cost of living area, unless you're a work from home type person or an entrepreneur where you can work from anywhere, your salary will change to be competitive in the area in which you're living. So if it's a low cost of living area, most likely the income is lower as well. you're kind of, it could be an equal trade.

Usually with lower cost of living comes lower like just lower.

less things around you. Yeah. So let's take that. That's the one. That's an easy one, but it's hard for people to do. The other one, the credit card thing, think it's... It sounds fantastic on paper. And most likely the people that need this advice, financial advice, are the ones that probably struggle with impulse buying and probably struggle with credit card debt. So saying, hey, open lots of credit cards and take advantage of the cash back on all of them and spread purchases out and get your miles and do all these things.

It's very

Speaker 2 (28:10.25)
And then you end up, you know, five grand in debt on one card and now you're 10 grand in debt split across five cards. Because the problem, like his other bandaid on a bullet hole, it's like, yeah, the problem is already there. You're not solving the problem by opening more credit cards. The problem is the spending.

there.

Speaker 1 (28:28.332)
Yeah, I don't know how I feel about that information or about...

Yeah, I mean, if you're good with your credit card and you can pay it off every month and you're diligent about then yeah, take it take get the credit cards that give you the most back.

But how many people that are struggling financially pay off their credit card? The only way you can reach the cash back benefits.

Yeah,

So, this is why I have heartburn with generic financial advice. Because the one person who's looking at that is like, oh, this is great. I'm going to go open a bunch of credit cards. And then 12 months later, I'm now $20,000 in debt across multiple different cards. Not the greatest advice. So I would say if you're going to do anything, the 72 hour impulse buy

Speaker 2 (28:51.8)
Generic advice.

Speaker 2 (29:15.232)
It's an easy one.

That is an easy one. Just do that. And do it a lot.

Yeah, and the budget. Like zero-based budgeting. I agree with that. And then the 50-30-20.

Yes, we didn't go into that actually.

That's like 50%. I mean, he did the 50, 30, 20. There's other ratios. But it's like 50 % for your needs. 20 % save.

Speaker 1 (29:35.598)
So, % needs, 30 % wants, 20 % savings. So, adjust those percentages based on income and track your progress monthly. Eventually, 20 % savings and 50 % needs will be flipped.

There you go.

Yeah. And then the zero-based budgeting is, you know, looking at everything you spend and put it up against that. know, is it making, is it adding value to my life or is it adding stress? I, you know, is it making me happy? Is it helping with my happiness or taking away from my happiness? And I think if you, you look at all expenditures that way, right. And then you start to, it makes it easier to cut things. And that,

spending money on things you don't actually use or don't add value in your life, you'd be surprised at how much of it is there.

Speaker 1 (30:30.254)
This is interesting. So he says to negotiate bills.

Yeah, there's, know I've, I've known people in my life that do that all the time. I mean, that's not me, but there's, there's a lot of people that do that.

We did just do something like that recently though with our storage unit.

Well, we didn't negotiate. just flipped. I've known people in the past that have medical bills and then you just call in and give them a sob story and talk about the issues and then they negotiate a lower bill.

it.

Speaker 1 (31:02.38)
And when he said negotiate bills, I was thinking like calling your cable company and being like, I'm going to cancel and if you don't lower my...

bill. Well that could be one too but the same with you know the medical bill like oh it's $250 for this well you know I don't have $250 but I need you know the service and can you work with me and everything's negotiable. People negotiate stuff all the time.

Maybe that should be one of my, I wanna learn how to negotiate better because I am terrible at it. Right, like people will tell me how much something costs and I'm like, okay, let me write a check.

Me too.

Speaker 2 (31:40.3)
I'm the opposite. just say what I'm willing to pay. And that's my negotiation. But there's a lot of people that go, they're hagglers, where the negotiating is fun for them. it's, hey, I want to go 50 % over what you say, and then we'll work our way up to a number. Yeah, that's Dave. Yeah, for me, if I have the number I'm willing to pay, I just go straight with that number. And then they're like, well, what about this? I'm like, no, no, that's the number. I'm not going up or down. That's the number.

See, I don't do that. I'm too nice. I'm too nice in life and I'm too nice in tennis. I don't want to hit the winner or hurt somebody, so I just lob the ball over and let them smash it at me.

Maybe.

Speaker 2 (32:19.63)
It's not my pickleball game. I smash.

See.

Okay, moving on.

Yeah, so I think the other one we were going to talk about was DeepSeek, which really depends on what time this pod comes out. But yeah, the market took a shit yesterday because of it with the data that came out. Why? you know, there's a lot of...

And did you buy the dip? No. I did.

Speaker 2 (32:47.214)
I can't time the market here. But there's lots of controversy right now. We've talked about AI and a lot of people think that AI could be a bubble, right? Where there's all these overvalued AI companies, which I would agree there were tons of venture capital being poured into anything that said AI. So I do believe that the valuations on most AI companies are a bit over-indexed. whether they'll be, you know,

Tulip thing or not where it just, you know, circa the late nineties where everything just the bubble bursts. We'll see. But this was kind of one of those could be seen as a lead indicator where, you know, China produced a AI app. Oh, they have an AI app and China it's a Chinese company deep seek. And they released some more data the other day around.

the scoring and competitiveness of DeepSeek versus OpenAI versus like what Microsoft has built. And it performed admirably. Like it's great results, maybe overperformed OpenAI in certain things, but not everything. But the real kicker was that, you know, the analysts that reviewed it and their own internal, know, documentation or whatever they put out in public was saying that they trained this model over the last six months and spent less than $6 million doing it.

And what freaked the market out is like saying, hey, they did all this and it's comparatively performing with a $6 million investment versus these others, which are, have spent, you know, hundreds of millions and on track to send billions of dollars in AI technology. And are we over hyping and overspending in the area if we can do it for 6 million, the same product for 6 million. then Nvidia, which is the people that makes most of the chips that the AI.

the large language models use, know, that stock plummeted like 17 % the other day because like, hey, maybe these forecasts and this gangbusters production isn't really going to continue because we don't need that much. Yeah. Because DeepSeek's our, you know, their language model and the way they do it with, you know, they don't ask everything in the cluster, every question. don't, you know, it's interesting how they tackle the problem, right? And they segment it out and only use certain aspects of them.

Speaker 2 (35:07.628)
the model to answer the question, which saves on compute, which is the driver. So if you can save on compute and train and be more efficient at it and, you know, maybe the other algorithms learn from it and we can be more efficient across the board. yeah. Why wouldn't you? Yeah. Well, the amount of, you know, spend and allocation of funds that's already been put there, you know, would lead you to believe that, ma'am, maybe we are overspending a ton. And then you're like, okay, so.

If we're able to produce a similar product at the 10th, 100th cost. Yeah. Yeah. How valuable is open AI? So we'll see. I think it was interesting, but then at the end of the day, you know, what's different about DeepSeek than TikTok.

Exactly. That's it's a Chinese owned company.

Yeah, so they're bound by Chinese law when it comes to data protection, data rights, privacy, coercion, control. Who's using it? Yeah. So it was the number one app on Apple App Store yesterday. it? Yeah.

See.

Speaker 2 (36:17.998)
Yeah, it's cheaper and gives you the same answers. Yeah, the question is like with any AI large language model, do not give it any personal data or don't upload stuff to it that is yours because once you upload it, it is part of the model. There's no way to get it out. Yeah, so no way to get it out once it's in there. then, you know, I would, know, me being the, you know, I'm not a tin foil hat guy, but I'm definitely

apprehensive and, you know, TikTok and the way that, you know, one is the ability to track, you know, young people and U.S. citizens, but also be able to influence U.S. citizens with information. Now imagine if you're using an AI model that you think is giving you correct answers that are sourced on real data and they tweak the model here and there and

give it preferences to certain things, then it can start to give you answers that it wants you to know.

Yeah, that's scary.

Or make decisions that you know may not be in the country's best interest

Speaker 1 (37:25.198)
100%. I mean, Maddox, our nine-year-old, he's absolutely convinced that they're stealing all of our data. He will tell you that the heartbeat. He's like, don't use TikTok. They're taking all your data.

Well, they are.

Speaker 2 (37:40.257)
Exactly. He listens to me.

He does. So now my son is a tinfoil hat wearing.

Yeah, I think it's that and then it's crazy. The Chinese government could do whatever they want and they could have an office in the company. They could be looking at all the data, putting in more data into the model to skew the answers or even changing the weights file.

So TLDR, stick with OpenAI.

I don't know. don't I don't know. gives you a copilot for free. It's pretty good. Does it? It's part of your office suite now. I don't know if you've upgraded recently, but it's part of Word. I have that, actually. It's part of Word and Excel and PowerPoint. They've got these two little square circles. Really? It appears on the top left. Yeah. You can just hit it, and it'll say, oh, do you want me to summarize? Do you have a question? Should be a paperclip.

Speaker 1 (38:30.518)
What's really interesting is that we used, so we've been doing Ava's college application. in Common App, which is just the platform that they use to apply to all these different schools. But within it, there are personal essay questions that you have to do. And they are all acknowledging that chat GPT and AI are being used. But it says,

right there it says that we want you to use it as a tool not as your soul writing.

I mean, I would agree. If you think about what's the purpose of college.

to teach you how to be a functioning adult.

Yeah. And to get the skills to be able to be a productive member of the workforce and earn a living. Yeah. And do not, I mean, I'd be hard pressed to find what job you're going to get that requires a college education that you wouldn't be using open AI or another AI tool to help you. Yeah. So it should be augmenting you. It shouldn't be the same thing. Like if someone, if you just use open AI to write your PowerPoint and then you present on it, it's probably going to be shit.

Speaker 1 (39:33.326)
I think that needs to trickle down to high school.

Speaker 2 (39:43.414)
Yeah. But if you use it to help. Line. Yeah. Give you the outline or give you some text and then you rewrite it to make it into what you want. Yeah. Great. Or you give it what you wrote and then have it punch it up.

with an outline.

Speaker 1 (39:55.582)
And actually that's what she did with one of her essays. Like she wrote the entire thing herself, like just stream of consciousness onto a Word document. And then she took that Word document and put it into ChatGPT to proofread it. Right? And I'm like, okay, this is what we want, right? We want you to use these tools to augment your work, but not to do it for you. And I think that you need, it needs to come down to a high school level too, because there are...

There was a class she took last year where they wouldn't let them do any writing outside of class because they were so worried about people using chat, GBT, and Claude. Like, that makes no sense. So she did really poorly in that class because she's just a... She's a slow worker. She does things on her own time. And that's just Ava. So forcing her to do all of her writing in a 35-minute period, that's just cruel and unusual.

But using, think, AI, almost every job is going to be impacted by it. sure. You're going to use it to augment you and to enable you to produce more faster quicker. So why would you not teach that as part of the skills? Yeah.

Stop fighting it. You have to lean into it because it's not going anywhere.

Yeah, mean the productivity enhancements are great.

Speaker 1 (41:11.416)
couple of my, one of my founders for next chapter, she, opened her world up to chat GPT and she's like, this is amazing. I can't believe I've been trying to do this without it for so long.

Yeah, I mean for me I even use it to do Excel stuff like you give it the data and the parameters and be like I need to format it this way you know all right do it comment and limit it so then I can import it in so give me all this data are sorted by this add this concatenate these two lines do a V look up here and then I spit it all of the CSV and then I put it in Excel

It's It's opening things up. All right, you guys, that's all we have for today. You have a meeting at two o'clock and it is two o'clock. So I love you. Goodbye.

You are the Wickedness Link, goodbye!

Thank you for tuning in to Mary to the startup. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you did, please take a moment to like, rate and subscribe to our podcast. Your support helps us reach more people and keeps the conversation going. If you have any questions or topics you'd like us to cover, drop me a message. I love hearing from you guys until next time.

Speaker 2 (42:20.366)
you