What does it take to build a technology company that thrives for nearly 20 years in one of the fastest-moving industries? For Art Powell, the answer comes down to one word: trust.
In this episode of The Strategic Business Influencer, Paige Velasquez Budde sits down with Art Powell, Founder & CEO of Trinsic Technologies. Since 2005, Art has transformed Trinsic into a trusted IT solutions partner for companies across Central Texas and beyond. With more than 25 years of experience in tech—including time at IBM and PCorder.com—Art shares how he’s built a company grounded in relationships, innovation, and a people-first approach
Art opens up about:
– Why he left big tech to launch Trinsic, and the ultimatum from his wife that made him commit fully
– How honesty and accountability became the foundation of long-term client relationships
– Why not every client is the right fit—and the hard decisions leaders must make as they scale
– The importance of viewing technology as an ROI driver, not just a cost center
– His perspective on AI hype vs. reality, and how CEOs should be thinking about integrating it strategically
Along the way, Art shares personal insights on faith, family, and why identity outside of work is essential for every leader.
Want to learn more about Art and the incredible work his team is doing? Visit https://trinsictech.com/.
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Want to dive deeper into how today’s most trusted leaders grow their businesses, brands, and influence? Pre-order my upcoming book, The Strategic Business Influencer, and get the playbook for turning leadership into your most powerful business asset.
Paige: Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Strategic Business Influencer, my new series for leaders who know that in today’s world trust is the greatest competitive advantage. Our guest today is Art Powell, a luminary in the intersection of technology, entrepreneurship, and community. As the founder and CEO of Trinsic Technologies, Art has transformed the Austin based IT solutions company into a tech powerhouse since its inception in 2005. With over 25 years of experience in the tech arena, Art has honed his expertise with industry names like IBM, PCorder.com, setting the stage for his groundbreaking journey with Trinsic. Under Art’s visionary leadership, Trinsic has emerged as a trusted name in the tech world, delivering services from strategic IT consulting, Trinsic Insider Experiences is what it’s named, which I love, uh, to proactive technology services and avant-garde cloud solutions. Their mantra is tech built by humans for humans, which I wanna touch on later. Um, they’ve combined that with their custom solutions for every client, and that has really carved a unique niche for them in the central Texas tech ecosystem. I’m personally excited to have Art on today because he has spoke so much wisdom into my life, from leadership to business ownership and entrepreneurship, to even my spiritual walk with God. And so I’m just thrilled to have him here just to share all of that wisdom with you all too. So I’m thrilled to welcome Art onto the series.
Art: Thank you for having me. I’m very honored to be here.
Paige: Well, I, I wanna talk about your journey first.
So, as I mentioned, you’ve spent over two decades in tech, you know, from IBM, PCorder.com now to founding Trinsic back in 2005. You know, what inspired you to make the leap from working inside, you know, a massive company to building your own IT solutions company?
Art: Yeah, I asked that question. Of myself, quite honestly, quite often.
Um, I, you know, I, it was, it was one of those things, uh, but believe it or not, I’m with 20 years now Trinsic, and so I am approaching 30 years in the industry, which I can’t. Congratulations. Well, I think so. I’m just not ready to be that old yet, but apparently I am. You know, I really made the jump because this was my third business.
I’d had two businesses prior, and then I got really wrapped up in tech. And so I did, you know, I have that entrepreneurial streak in me. I think it just wasn’t gonna go away. And so when I made the jump, I, I knew. I realized quickly realized that the relationship between IT tech vendors and companies were broken.
They were based on mistrust and one of the things I wanted to bring to the table was to bring trust great customer service, but trust ’cause they didn’t really understand what they did. You know, I would be in these meetings with executives. I would be the director of it. And they would sit there and hire someone who was making half the money, was making twice as much money as I did.
They knew half the knowledge I did, you know, but they would, they would say things that I was saying over and over again, but they would say it and everybody, all the execs would be like, well, looking at me like Art, why didn’t you tell us this? And I’m, you know, trying not to jump on the table to stArt strangling people.
But I realized like. You don’t, you don’t. A prophet has no honor in his own how home and an IT guy has no honor in his own company. And I realized, A, I want to be the outside guy, and B, it really needed to be a relationship built on trust. And so I stArted Trinsic in 2005. We have definitely evolved. We’re, uh, a lot different.
Probably a completely different company. They were in 2005, but that’s why I wanted to stArt it. And my wife gave me the ultimatum. This was the third business, and she was like, all right, this is it. Like I’m gonna let you do this one, but there’s gonna be no more after that. So I knew I had to make it work, so that’s what I did.
Paige: I love that your wife was the one who was like, you have to make this work. I love it. And you mentioned trust quite a bit and mm-hmm. It is such a high trust. High stakes industry, especially when you’re reporting to or working with CEOs directly, or the executive team, their leadership team. So I’m curious from Therin side, now that you’re on this side, how have you and your company built and maintain that trust over the years with clients that you’ve worked with who depend on you for these mission critical systems to their business?
Art: Yeah, that’s, that’s really difficult. Right. And one of the things we talk about a lot internally at the company is once you break that trust, you can’t gain it back. It’s hard to really gain it back. Yeah. And so one of the things we do is we be honest. When we make mistakes, we own it. You know, there we could.
We could cover a lot of the mistakes we made because people don’t really understand what we do. And so the fact that we come to people and just say, yeah, we blew it, right, is like, like, this is it and this is what we’re gonna do. Definitely gives us some goodwill. I mean, it’s goodwill. You can burn real quickly.
Be keep doing it over and over. But, so that’s the very second thing is just understand that all, not all relationships are good. We are not a good fit for all companies. Mm-hmm. And I think one of the things we’ve matured over the years is to realize, you know. We’ll take about 80% of the, the, the people who are interested in us, we’ll take them on.
But we’ve done a better job going out of that 80%, there’s probably 10 or 15% that we fi figure out. It’s just not a good fit. And so Sure, instead of trying to string the relationship along, right, mm-hmm. We at some point just say, look, this is not gonna be a good fit. Or we let the client kind of figure that out and come back to us and say, this’s not gonna be a good fit.
And then we. Gracefully pArtway. So I think two things. Any company, I think any company, any vendor, any service company needs to do is, is number one, be honest when you screw up. And number two is don’t try to, don’t try to fit the needs of a company that’s not gonna be a good fit. Because you’re gonna have, you’re not gonna be able to, it’s gonna be difficult.
Paige: That’s exactly right. And you know, I would say that’s a. Lesson that, that we’ve definitely learned too. You know, we’re both service businesses in a way as well. And Yep. It’s hard and it, y’all might have seen this as well. We have found. As we scale in different stages, there might be clients that were once a fit, that now maybe aren’t Oh yeah.
For where we are and that sometimes I feel like as a leader, the toughest thing to recognize is, you know, when that ideal client profile changes or it should change and how to navigate the those conversations. So I love that you brought that up.
Art: Yep. And we’ve gone through that. I mean, we’ve gone through it twice in the history of being a 20-year-old company.
You’re just gonna do that. And Right. We went through a big round of that in, you know, 22 and 23. Uh, even in some, you know, you know, some in 24, but we, it’s hard to believe it’s 25. But anyway, 23, 24. So we, you know, instead of grow, we grew. A lot between 2016 and 2020 like around 21, 22. Mm-hmm. I think, yeah, 22 was last year.
We had a huge grow. We were almost 40%. That was very painful. Wow. We weren’t that small. And so we’ve, the last two, three years we’ve been cleaning house, both internally and both with our client base. And as new revenue comes in, we’ve been replacing it. You know, we’ve been saying, okay, look, maybe you’re not a good model.
Some of those, you know, obviously the, the last 18 months there was a recession. That wasn’t a recession, but, right. Yeah, there, there was, we used that as an opportunity to replace that revenue with really, really good revenue and good clients on and on a different model that’s actually more conducive to what we are trying to do as a company.
And that has paid off dividends. It was painful. Mm-hmm. But it was, it was very, very effective.
Paige: Yeah, and I, I think what you said earlier, even to integrity and then your decisions behind who you work with, really speak to the, the heArt that you have as a company and your desire to truly service the client.
The absolute, you know, utmost, you know, client service, world class service that you can give because you have to have those. Those two things really clear amongst the team to do that. I’m curious, in your work, what are the most common IT challenges or blind spots that you see companies come to you with and what do you feel is actually causing those?
Art: Yeah. Uh, most of the time we’re hitting companies when there’s a lot of pain involved and, and sometimes the vendor’s getting thrown under the bus. You know, sometimes it is the vendor’s fault. I mean, we’ll run into situations where we’re just like, oh yeah, you are an abusive relationship, so we get it. So, but sometimes it’s because they themselves don’t really have the operational infrastructure to be able to give the vendor what they need.
And so. It’s one of the, you mentioned the Intrinsic Insider experience, our consulting, that is one of the things we always lead with because we really need to get to know the company organizationally, where, because it’s both strategic and tactical and, and, and pArticularly in technology, you can’t just be tactical because technology affects the strategic outcome of what you’re trying to do.
And if you focus only on the tactical, then you’re, you may end up getting solutions that just really are not gonna support your strategic. Your over the overview of where the company’s headed in your strategic objectives. And so one of the first things we try to do is say, is this technology really lining up with what you’re trying to do?
Mm-hmm. And most of the times it’s not like that. At some level. It’s not one of the things we do. And I recommend, you know, companies don’t even have to engage us with consulting. We would love that. But one of the things companies do, just go do workplace interviews. Go get a employee who’s highly entrusted and go to them and say, go sit down for like 30.
45 minutes and talk to employees, say, how do you use the technology and what’s frustrating you and what’s not frustrating you? And we’ve come back with answers that have shocked the executive level. Wow. And so, yeah, because employees aren’t, you know, if they feel like they’re not gonna complain because they feel like, well maybe my job’s a stake if I do that.
But when there’s a third pArty who comes in, they’re gonna open up. Sure. And we learn a lot of things. Right. And, and a lot of times we’ll have executives tell us like, oh, well this technology’s working great. And then we go talk to the employees and they. It sucks. You know? So it, pArt of the, pArt of the objective of every company should be that the technology the employees are using actually helps them do their job more efficiently and better.
And then the second thing is it should fit overall the strategic objectives of the company. And there’s a fine Art to that. And you really need to know someone who knows technology and knows how to talk to people and is people oriented. And that’s why we say. Built by humans for humans. This technology isn’t here for its own sake.
It’s not for us to geek out. I mean mm-hmm. We like, we geek out, but I mean, that’s, that’s, we’re geeks, so that’s odd. But at the end of the day, the technology’s supposed to be there to serve human beings. I mean, this is a problem with ai, which I’m sure we’ll get into, and, and that’s what people forget. And when people forget that, that’s when they run into problems.
Paige: And I love that you, you hit on that mantra. ’cause that was gonna be my next question. Yeah. Where did that come from? What was the inspiration? Because I think you’re right. You, you truly have to be able to know how to ask the right questions, but most importantly, listen right.
Art: Yep. Yep. And I, I had a friend of mine when I was young.
I would, I can be a talker and just shock Paige. You would never guess that, right? You dunno.
Paige: I would never guess that.
Art: Never guess that I can be a bit of a talker. And he, he told me one time, he said, you know what he said it was the, the jaw of a jackass that killed a thousand enemies. And it’s the jaw, it’s the jaw of a jackass that kills many sails.
And he is right. Yes. One of the things we try to do is listen, you know, I’ve gotten better with it as I’ve gotten older, but you need to listen to your customers and what they’re trying to tell you. And we have, I have a saying and, and I tell the techs, it’s like, just fix the problem. And if you can’t fix the problem, you’re not listening because you don’t know what the real problem is.
Yes. And, and that, you know, that is pArt of the issue. To that, you, you do it. But we came up with that mantra because we felt like so much technology was about trying to replace employees and trying to replace human beings instead of enhancing them and making their lives better and making their, their job better and making them more productive.
And we really, from the i from the website, which doesn’t look like a traditional MSP website, no. All the way to. To what we do day to day. We try to do everything to dispel that whole idea about that. It’s not about hu, it’s about the technology. It’s not, you know, it, it is about humans. It’s not about the technology.
Paige: Yes. And I, I love that and I, I did wanna comment on the website and, and, and I’ll let you share the, the URL with everybody at the end, but. INTRINSIC’S website reads nothing like anything else I’ve seen in y’all’s industry. It’s also really easily consumable. So you would think when you go to an IT services website, I would not.
Know what you’re talking about, but with RINs website I do it, it really clicks. And so as you went through that branding process, which I know who you did that with, and Yes, definitely shout ’em out. But I’m curious kind of what direction you gave. What was the behind the scenes brainstorm because y’all rebranded.
What was it? You know, a few years back
Art: it was long. Yeah. It was about seven, eight years back we rebranded. Okay. And I, yeah, it was Altered Endeavors and they did a great job and I just came to it and just basically said, I don’t want a website that looks anything like a technical website. I want a website that looks like a customer service website and that it’s about people.
And they did a brilliant job with it. We are about to revamp it, but it’s still gonna keep the same bill and the same. The same purpose. And I get compliments from executives constantly about our website. And that’s really who we’re trying to reach, right? We’re not right. We’re not trying to reach the IT guy, the Saturday Night Live IT guy, you know, who’s like, get out of my way.
You know? And I just aged myself. ’cause there’s a whole bunch of Gen Zs who have no idea what I’m talking about. It’s like, go Google it. Anyway. But, but the, but the whole, but the whole thing is, is that we really wanted that right? From the branding and everything that we’re about people we’re not about technology.
And that has served us well. Yeah,
Paige: absolutely. Now I wanna, I wanna share some of the conversation we had just before pressing record. You were talking a lot about the exciting things, the future of the company, what y’all are getting into, and so. You know, you, you’ve talked about previously how it has shifted from being just back office function to really a driver of growth for a lot of companies.
Yep. So how should CEOs rethink their tech strategy to create more of a competitive advantage rather than just, Hey, let’s keep the lights on. Hey, let’s stay secure.
Art: That is the 10. That’s a great question. That’s a $10,000 question. And it would be 10 million now, I guess inflation anyway, but the, but the whole thing is the, what I try to tell CEOs and tech and executives all the time is if tech is just a cost, then it’s not really being affected.
It really should have an ROI on almost everything you’re doing. And granted there’s some baseline costs like email and storage and, and and backups, things like that. But those are, those have become so commoditized and are so inexpensive. It’s just, that’s just the cost of doing business. So, but the rest of your technology stack, how you interact with your customers, how the employees interact with each other.
There needs to be some kind of ROI, in other words, what is the cost? What is it costing me to do it and how am I regaining that cost? And then some by using technology. And if you don’t, then you, you can end up spending money or you begin to see tech as only a cost and then you’re not really taking full advantage of how the technology.
Can really, really help you and I if, if we’ve got time, I’ll give a quick example. So yes, please. We had a, we had a customer who, when we signed them up, they were a manufacturing customer. When we signed them up, there was a, there was a, when we did the workplace interview, there was one of the techs there, the engineers there who’s like, if you can solve this manual process, I have to do every day.
I could probably get 600 to, you know, a quArter, a million dollars worth of revenue, more out the door every month. We’re like, holy Toledo, why? Like, why has anybody addressed this? Right? And, and when we took him over to client, that’s exactly what we did. I mean, we got, it did turn out to be like six, $700,000 a month.
More of revenue he could get out the door. I mean, so the amount of money that they spent to help us get that automated. The Art was minuscule compared to the ROI and a lot of times employees have like these hidden gems like that and they just need to be asked like, what can we do? Like if we could automate something in your job, how, how, you know, that would be able to be able for you to deal with a lot more revenue.
What would that be? And so it’s just asking those questions, but that is the kind of thing that people need to look for. That’s the way you need to look at tech. And most people look at it as just another bottom line expense. And that is so shortsighted, pArticularly with ai, where it’s coming. That’s so shortsighted and that’s, that’s not gonna make you competitive.
Paige: That that is huge. Absolutely. And I love, you know, asking that question, and we’re gonna get to AI in just a minute, but I wanna ask you a quick follow up. Sure. Uh, for a lot of leaders out there, at what point, whether it’s, you know, team size, revenue size, should CEOs be thinking about this, and then at what point should they be.
Bringing a firm on or maybe thinking about an in-house team?
Art: That’s a good question. We get this all the time. I usually say, typically when you have five employees, you’re hTrinsicg families and friends, so you’re fine. When you get to 10 employees, eh, you’re stArting to get some people you don’t know, you gotta stArt thinking about security around 10.
When you get to 15 and 20 employees, you now have the same problems as. Fortune 500 company. Wow. Just at a much smaller scale. So I typically say 15 to 20 is where you’re now, some people like lawyers and things like that, they can be smaller and they have much more of a need. They’re much more reliant on technology.
Sure. So you could be smaller, but if you’re really relying on technology and you’re smaller, yeah, you probably wanna look at an outside firm, but when you get around 15, 20, you’re getting complexity. Where do you store data? You know, and the sooner you know, how do we share it? How do we share it securely?
How do I interact with the customers on technology? And if you stArt early with this, this is where it’s important because what most companies do is they wait till around 40 or 50 employees to stArt asking those questions. Yes. And now they got a mess. They gotta clean up. And it’s better if you stArt smaller at a smaller size and get some of that hashed out.
And then as you get bigger it’s, you’re gonna have more of a foundation laid. Because a lot of times we’re coming to these 40 to 80 employees and they’re a mess. And we’re having just to get a foundation laid before we can even get to the ROI and address. Some of these other issues.
Paige: Mm-hmm. So, so be proactive.
That’s the key.
Art: Yes. And you could do it incrementally. I mean, that’s the thing. But I think some people think like, uh, I got, hi, I’m gonna spend $10,000 a month and hire this outside firm. No, you can do things more incrementally. Even just bringing outside, somewhat consultant to come in and just help you lay out what you need to do.
And then maybe have ’em periodically, bring someone in periodically to check things. And then once you stArt getting bigger and you can afford it, you know, because. When you get around 20 to 30 employees, you’re gonna, it’s gonna be cheaper for you to, to farm this out on a fractional basis than to hire someone internally.
When you get up to 50 to 75 employees, you’re gonna need someone who’s a little more, you know, they don’t have to be a technology expert, but they need to be more tech savvy. Mm-hmm. They need to have maybe some kind of background in tech and they can help you and, but yet understand the company objectives and can interface with those outside vendors to make sure that you’re, they’re line, you know.
They’re lining up to what you’re trying to do.
Paige: Amazing. Well, that’s incredible guidance just as leaders are thinking about scaling and how to approach it. So I appreciate you answering that. No problem. Uh. I’ll probably get to the most, uh, loaded question of this conversation, which is ai. So ai, as you mentioned, transforming every single corner of the tech world.
So from your vantage point mm-hmm. What is hype, what is real?
Art: Uh, we could do an entire podcast just on this, but I’ll try to keep it brief. I’ve been And what do,
Paige: what do CEOs most importantly, need to pay attention to? Yeah,
Art: that’s really the key, right? Mm-hmm. Um, so look, it’s not hype, but it is hype. That’s the only way I can describe AI right now.
Okay? So, um, I’ve been actually watching AI for about 10 years. I’ve really been watching closely, closely for about the last five or six years, shocked as every, I was one of the first guys, you know, the first a hundred thousand people in chat, TDP three who saw it and was like, oh my God, this is, how did they do this?
Um, and so what, what people forget is AI’s been around a long time. There are many forms of ai, generative ai, which is what Cheat chat sheet TP is. Which is what Claude is. Which is what GR is. That’s the new thing on the block. Okay. But there are a lot of other AI that are out there. They’ve been working for a long, you know, ways uses ai.
I mean, they’ve been using AI for a long time. A, you know, they just don’t have generative ai. And generative AI is great, but what it’s done is it’s kind of s. Stolen the spotlight. You know, a generative AI is that prima donna in the tech world. It’s like, I want everything focused on me. And because of that, people are missing it.
It’s short, they’re missing the shortcomings and they’re not making wise decisions. I think it was, um, it was a major, uh, it was a major, uh, research firm. I can’t remember which one well known, but maybe Garner. But one of them recently came out and said, 73% of all I AI projects fail. They said the reason why is, and this is recent, this was like the last 18 months or something, so this wasn’t like on the old stuff, and they said the reason why there was two main, two main reasons why, number one is they were trying to get the AI to do things it wouldn’t do.
That was number two actually, the. First problem was not involving employees in the ai with the ai. So I could really go, and I’m not gonna go down this rabbit hole, maybe we could do a whole thing on AI just to discuss that. But the, the big problem is, is when you, first of all, you need your. Employees involved because it’s not gonna work.
If you’re, this, remind me so much of the 1980s when computer nineties, late eighties, early nineties, when computers came out, I was actually there alive. Thank you very much. And so when they, and I was actually working as an adult and when they dropped computers in like to off places, you couldn’t just say, oh well we’re integrated.
That’s not how that worked. Mm-hmm. Like everything was manual, so you had to get all the data and find a way to get it manually into the computer. Wow. And then when it was done, it had to print it out manually, because that’s why we have printers, because all the rest of systems, were still not, we’re still manual processes.
And that’s what you, well, AI right now is in the same boat. You can’t just drop AI in and go, we’re integrated. Right. Sure. If you really want the efficiency. Emphasis of ai. If you really wanna make your employees productive, then what you need to do is you need to integrate it with your backend and to integrate it with your backend requires.
You find a way to get the data in, you find a way to get the data out. The other problem, and, and you need the, you need to interact with your employees and what AI is really forcing companies to do, which they have not done well, and we’re working up the food chain, we’re getting bigger and bigger companies, and you would think when we’re.
Getting to those bigger companies that they would have more of their stuff together. They don’t, that just MythBuster right there. Yeah. Spoiler alert. And so when, when you get, they, they, what AI’s forcing companies to do is really look at their tech stack, really look at their operational procedures.
And the other thing that’s forcing to do is look at their data. Mm-hmm. Because companies really aren’t taking advantage. I mean, there are some non AI. Things you can do with data. And so I would say with companies before, and this is what we do before you, if you have an idea of what AI could do, you need to look here at your OI.
We talked to a company that wanted to solve a, you know, a problem that was costing about a thousand dollars a month in manual labor, and it would cost them about $5,000 a month to solve the problem. We’re like, that’s not a good use of ai, like generative ai. The other problem is you’re not, AI doesn’t do predictive things.
Well, we, we came out with our first Taz product called Call Sniper, which basically helps QA people find bad calls, right? There are a lot of AI companies that are trying to get the AI agents to be the ones who are actually taking the first round of calls. Well, it’s not working. Mm-hmm. And I could have told ’em it’s not gonna work.
Why? Because generative AI is all about. It always gives you a different answer. That’s why it’s so, it’s, it looks creative because it’s not gonna tell you exact. It may, it may give you the same answer, but in different ways. Mm-hmm. Well, what does that mean? That means that AI does not do things well repetitively.
At all. And yet when you’re, when you have a agents answering a phone call, they’re on a script. And so they’re trying to get these ai, these generative AI agents to, to stay on a script. And it’s not designed to do that. It’s failing. Mm-hmm. Miserably. Nobody can use the thing. It’s almost, it’s as bad as the first web bots that came out on the, the chat bots that came out on the web.
And so this is the problem when you now. If you’re trying to use generative AI as a because it’s a great modeler if you’re trying to use it for predictive analysis, oh my gosh, it shines, it does incredible things. So this is so important for CEOs to, to a know your tech stack. Know how you have some good idea how you would integrate ai.
’cause either you need to integrate it where there’s a great ROI or where there’s like a functionality like with the predictive analysis that it’s gonna offer that you just simply couldn’t do it in a traditional way. And then you need to know. So you need to know, be aware of your operational stack, aware of how you would wanna put the AI in.
And then you need to find someone who’s knowledgeable, who’s gonna tell you whether or not. The AI is actually gonna work well in that situation or not. Mm-hmm. So these are some really important things CEOs need to be thinking about.
Paige: I love that. And I do feel like we could probably spend a whole nother episode just on this.
I’m open to it. It be so valuable. M Open. I blog on it.
Art: I blog on it constantly. I talk about it on LinkedIn constantly. I talk about it ad nausea to my wife and my friends who are sick of hearing about it. So if I had a way to espouse this out, that they would be very, you know, get it off my chest. Amazing.
Great. Amazing. We
Paige: will do it. We will do our, yeah. So
Art: I, I wanna be really clear here. So, ai, like, I’m not saying ignore ai, like LLM by itself, even with, without, without all the hype is transformative. Okay. I just wanna be very clear about that. But it’s not gonna replace human beings. It’s not even close to that yet.
And people need to understand that. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be looking at it, and that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be implementing it.
Paige: Yeah, sure. I think a few things that. Resonated with me that you said was one. CEOs need to be involved and need to be creating strategy around this. Yes. But number two, you also have to have team members, employees involved as well.
And I think, yes. You know, kind of from what I’ve seen, there’s been a lot of assigning out or Hey, y’all figure this out, or let’s, you know. Hire someone in. But really the, the CEO needs to be just as involved. Yes. Um, which is absolutely, it needs to the
Art: strategic objectives of your company and that’s what, so, and if you’re gonna use that, the, you know.
When you stArt implementing ai, employees are gonna get really nervous. ’cause right now AI’s the perfect scapegoat for all these That’s right. You know, layoffs, right? Because it can’t argue, right? I don’t, that’s right. I think very few of these, I know I’m implementing ai, know what it can do, what it can’t do.
And like Microsoft’s like, oh, we’re gonna to, you know, and all these big, we’re gonna lay off all these employees and anyway, but because of ai, and I’m like, okay. But, but the whole thing is, is that they’re gonna get nervous and you, that’s why getting them involved in the process and then letting them help you find those gems where the AI will make their life.
Because here’s the thing, 10, 15, you know, maybe less than that, five, seven years from now, if you don’t have AI implemented, I don’t, even if you’re a small company, your, you’re a and B employees are gonna go work for a company where AI is implemented, that’s gonna make their life easier. Mm-hmm. So if you wanna retain your talent, you need to be me using AI to make their job easier.
If you’re not. That’s where you’re gonna get left out.
Paige: Wow. That, that is great perspective. And I had never thought about it from that that lens. And you’re so right. So, yes. We’ll, we’ll come back and revisit even in a longer episode, the road. I would love that. Uh, I would love that.
Art: Yes.
Paige: No, there are, there are two questions that I love to ask every entrepreneur.
And so my first question for you is, who are you in addition to being a CEO?
Art: Uh, well, I’m, first of all, I’m a video game player, so that’s where I get so a lot, play a lot of rim world, no mansky, a lot of open world survival games. Minecraft, I’ve been playing Minecraft since version one, maybe even before version one.
You know, so every year at our company we set up a. Big nasty Minecraft server on our cloud infrastructure. We call it multimedia testing. And we, we, we bring all the kids in and we have a good time and we play. That is so cool. Yeah. All, all the kids and all the adults who are children, we play and have a great time.
And then, you know, the other thing that I am, I’m, I am, I’ve been to, at the same church, I got born again when I was 21. I teach theology, uh, about a 4K member of church, four, six k, member of church. And that’s what I do. That’s who I am outside of work. Right. And. And that’s important to me. I think every CEO needs to have something they identify with.
Outside of their job. You can’t let, you can’t let the job identify you because number one, it’s gonna go away. You can’t be CEO forever. And number two, it’s so consuming and it, it can consume you, your identity and everything. Right? And, and one of the proudest accomplishments that I ever have is the two proudest accomplishments that I have, is that I go to bed every night and I sleep like a baby.
My conscious is clear. I’ve done everything I could possibly do the right way. Not saying I’m perfect. And then number two is my wife of 34 years still wants to spend time with me. And that, you know, that is, and my children seem to want to still have a relationship with me. And that to me is more valuable than any type of other success.
Mm-hmm. Because those things are eternal. Me being a CEO, that’s, that’s temper.
Paige: Yeah, absolutely. I could not agree more. And congratulations as well. That is such a huge accomplishment for your marriage and your children. She’s Hispanic and I
Art: still have all my members of my body and I consider that, so you’re lucky.
Huge accomplishment. That’s difficult. I did that. I pulled it off.
Paige: Absolutely. Uh, and then the second question I have for you is, what is the impact that you wanna have at the end of every single day?
Art: Yeah, every single day I try to say, did I do? Did I do my job? Did I do what I was supposed to do in such a way that would glorify God and glorify Jesus?
And I, I can’t say I always do that, but sure. My impact every day is I want to draw people to Christ by what I do, not just by what I say. It’s in our, it’s in our manual. It says that the founder of this company has based his, the, the, the morals and this culture based on his relationship with Jesus.
Mm-hmm. And, and so that holds me to a standard, like I have to, I did that on purpose ’cause I want them to know, a, where I’m coming from, and B, that you know, I wanna be called out if I’m not. Doing that. And so every day, my goal is at the end of the day, I’ve glorified Jesus. I’ve glorified God by what I do, by the love I show for people, by the patience, by the forgiveness, by grace, the things that God has done for me, that Jesus has done for me, then I’m willing to do it to others, and that is my objective.
And if I do it, then I’m a happy camper that day.
Paige: That, that’s beautiful and also requires so much responsibility and requires a lot of accountability, as you said. Yes, it, it does. So I appreciate you sharing that. Art, if people want to follow you, to hear all of these incredible thoughts and also learn more about Intrinsic, where can they go?
Art: Yeah, the on LinkedIn, you can just look me up. Art Powell, Rin, it should come right up. I have enough followers now that it should come up. And then if you, if you wanna follow, if you wanna check our website out, just go to www.rintech.com. That’s T-R-I-N-S-E, uh, Rin, T-R-I-N-S-I-C-T-E-C h.com. Uh, you can check our website out, but feel fo feel free to me.
Follow me on LinkedIn. I post. About two, three times a day on ai. I do blogs on ai, so I, I am all about AI right now, so you will get an education. So
Paige: yes, a huge amount of resources and so I, I know your time is so valuable, Art, so I appreciate you just taking time to have this conversation, share your experience, your knowledge, and your heArt, um, with so many other leaders and entrepreneurs.
And I can’t wait until next time.
Art: Paige pleasure always. And I was so honored to be here. You’re, you do such a great job at this, uh, kudos to you. I know that you’re, you’re that all of this is gonna go so well. So I, I’m praying for you and, uh, you just shine girl. So you do a great job.
Paige: Thank you so much, and we’ll see you all next time.