#536 AI, AR & the Built World: Brian Corcodilos on Building Tomorrow’s Real Estate

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Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO Show with Mehmet today. I'm very pleased joining me from the us Brian Corcodilos. Uh, Brian is based in the us He is the CEO of Designblendz. [00:01:00] Um, I was telling you, Brian, before I hit the record button, I don't like to speak a lot on behalf of my, my guests, but you know, just as a teaser for the audience, we're gonna talk.

A lot, a lot about, you know, things we didn't discuss much on this show yet related to design, related to, to 3D visualization, to innovation, to technology. But again, I don't want to steal the light from you, Brian. I'll keep it to you. Tell us a little bit more about you, your background, your journey, and what brought you, uh, to where you are today.

So the floor is your Sprite. 

Brian: Yes, uh, myEd. Thanks. Uh, thanks for having me on. I, I appreciate it. Um, you know, my, my journey started a long, long time ago. Now, you know, I'm, I'm 35, but in my early preteen years, uh, 10, 11, 12, uh, I was playing video games very heavily and, uh, I very heavily before it was a cool thing to do, right?

You know, today kids are playing video games and making millions of dollars. It's, it's unbelievable. But I was playing video games and I was actually playing [00:02:00] professionally at a time. When, when it wasn't cool, right. Um, so I was involved in the virtual world way before people understood what it was or the powers of it and what it can do to not only you as an individual, but you know, the masses.

And, uh, you know, I, I, uh, kept going. I played video games heavily. I, I played professionally. Um, and it came time to figure out what I was gonna do for, for college. And someplace preparatory were, you know, what am I gonna go off and do in the world? I was, I was playing, uh, I was still playing games heavily, you know, and, you know, I was like, I don't like to read and write.

You know, I, I like playing video games. I like, you know, the virtual world. And, uh, I chose architecture as a, a means to go start studying and. Um, I got into architecture school and it was at a time where, you know, the hand drawing, everything that was being hand drawn was making its way into the computer.

And AutoCAD was, was, was around, but it was still in its infancy. Um, but the [00:03:00] technology at the time that was emerging, um, was known as bim, which is building information modeling. And I became in love with that because essentially, you know, my video gaming nerd side, I'm now building 3D buildings in this virtual world and putting 'em together and then visualizing 'em and watching 'em, you know, and then, you know, watching 'em come to life in the real world.

Um, but what I, what I saw was I, I saw where the world was heading and I, and I saw, you know, a time that, you know, people aren't just gonna create buildings anymore. You know, we have an ability now with technology. To essentially understand them down to every almost nut and bolt going into them. Just like when you build a car or something technical on an assembly line.

It's the same way in the computer. Um, and obviously, you know, building it, designing it, you know, in that way you also can visualize it to exactly what it's gonna be. So there's no interpretation of what is that gonna look like when it's built. I, you know, I'm surprised it took as long [00:04:00] as it did for the building trade to get to that point, but that's now the standard.

And, and people today wanna know exactly what it's gonna look like, what the experience is gonna be, and not only that, they want to, they want their, their building coordinated in a virtual way that's gonna eliminate change orders and waste during construction. Um, so Designblendz. So, so I run Designblendzs now, which is a 30 person, uh, company here in Philadelphia, pa.

We have an internal architecture, interiors and 3D visualization team with overlapping disciplines of, I have architects, industrial designers, animators, graphic designers, interior designers, all working together. Using the virtual world to inform the physical world at the highest levels. And, uh, we geek out, we nerd out right in the virtual world, but it's amazing to see our, our designs come to fruition.

Um, some of the sectors we operate in, uh, we're in the municipal government space, so we do municipal buildings, government buildings. We're working on fire stations. Uh, we do multifamily, mixed use, you know, hundreds of units. We'll do single family homes and everything in between [00:05:00] on that front. Um, working on an ice cream store, right where with an arcade.

So we, you know, we, we get involved in a lot of different, uh, projects, but primarily they all have something unique in that the owner's request is, you know. They hire us because we use the virtual world better than most to inform the physical. And that's, that's really what Designblendzs is today. And that's, that's what what I've built out of my college dorm room.

Mehmet: Uh, you brought a lot of memories. Yeah, because, you know, because I, of course, uh, uh, when I, uh, decided to study engineering, I didn't know, like even I wanted to be a, uh, a computer engineer, but they said, Hey. You have still to, to, to learn AutoCAD. Yeah. And you know, the first time I saw also the, the term BIMI said, what is BIM?

And then, you know, I, I sought to speak to some of my friends who were like civil engineers and they explained, and, and you know, it's, it's like a very cool, you know, domain to be in. [00:06:00] And of course, um. Uh, you know, always I say I wish I could have been a better, you know, designer, I would say, because I, I'm not, I wasn't good, you know, at drawing or anything like this, or anyone.

So anyone that does this very good, uh, you know, I want to learn more and I want to see like what's the passion behind it. Uh, and I'm happy, like you shared the story Now, jumping directly into the use cases, uh, with you, Brian. So, um. In your view, the current state of, uh, 3D visualization and virtual environment, uh, how does it look like?

Um, are you seeing like we are leveraging what the technology is allowing us to do to the maximum or are we still lagging behind? And the reason I'm asking you, because I hear mixed. Opinions and you know, especially in markets where real estate mainly is, you know, like [00:07:00] booming. I'm here in Dubai, in, in the UE and you know, like this is a very high market now.

Everyone want to to, to, you know, be in the real estate. But the point of yeah, like is really a 3D visualization, something that can actually show us the end product when it's built. So. What's the status of, of, uh, of this field now? Right. 

Brian: It's a great question. 'cause in, in the US here, right when, when visualization was starting, like when I, when I was back in, let's call it twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, and I was doing visualization for other developers and, and uh, you know, architects, other companies were hiring us 'cause they didn't have the technology or the know-how to do it.

You know, it was, it was a, it was a nice to have at that time. It kind of set you apart, but it wasn't really always required. Then what happened was as it continued to grow, like no, we need to know what things look like. Townships and stakeholders started like, why can't we see? I know. We know the technology is there, right?

Everyone started [00:08:00] watching those shows on HGTV and DIY network where you saw these like 3D things come on the screen, right, and show what things were gonna be. That was the start of it back in that time, and it kept progressing and progressing to the point where. You, you, you know, we were, we were on the forefront here in the states of, you know, we were creating the best visuals literally in the tri-state area.

You couldn't, there was not a better rendering company than us, and we were continuing to go and go, what? What happened over time? Now it's gotten to the point where ai, with the AI technologies now it's kind of leveled the playing field, where even if you don't have a lot of skillset, you can at least get some 3D visuals out of some of these technologies, right?

Like bim. Now has add-ons and things and software that has come out to make it easier to visualize and previously how you'd have to export files out of it, bring it to other software, and, and then do your rendering. Right. So a lot of technologies have progressed to just make it an easier process. What we've had to now do to literally stay ahead and keep innovating, we, [00:09:00] we focus on quality and accuracy.

Mehmet: Mm-hmm. 

Brian: What happens when, you know, you create a rendering, right? And you're like, Hey, here's your unit, your view out of the city. Right? Well, there's been cases where real estate agents and developers have gotten sued because they're misrepresenting in a rendering. What they're showing and what's what they're selling, right?

You, you can't just put a, put a picture out, say, this is what I'm selling. And it's not that reality. So we've taken the approach that we said, Hey, we, there's a ton of competition now for visualization out there. You can go to any, almost any third world country and get a rendering. It's crazy. But what those people can't do that we do here at the highest levels, is the accuracy of photorealism.

So lemme give you an example. True. When we're working on a, when we're working on a tower or or visualizing a unit, right, that has a skyline view. We're not just making up that skyline view, right? We're sending out a drone, we're hovering it at the exact height, could be 372 feet in the air that matches that BIM [00:10:00] environment, facing that view, grabbing it at the time of day.

We want to capture that most emotional point and then superimposing that into our visualization, right? So. We're, we're now not only making sure that the modeled area is accurate, right? Like the actual physicality of the buildings are accurate, we're actually ensuring that the, the, the real environment around that virtual world is a hundred percent accurate to that.

That's a massive differentiator because you can't, not everyone can do that. Well, the technology we're using, essentially what is, what they're using to create movies with, right? So we've had to elevate our. Our quality, our craft, our accuracy over our competitors and keep innovating in that way. 

Mehmet: Cool. Now let me ask you, because you mentioned this and you took some of the point that I, but that's fine.

Of course. Um, you mentioned about like, okay, like anyone can do, uh, you know, these kinds of out maybe computer generated image rendering, thread, CGIs, as they call it. [00:11:00] Um. For me, you know, as someone who might come to you and tell you, Brian, like, tell me how I can distinguish between a mere pretty CGI rendering versus, you know, a visualization work that actually adds value.

So what I should look at exactly, should I, you know, look at something which is trying to let me save on my. Cost. Is it like, should I see something that reduced my risk? Is it something that would allow me to take better decisions? Like mm-hmm. How do you define, you know, this distinguish between, you know, the both.

Uh, uh, things that I just mentioned, 

Brian: the, obviously, there's always, the first thing I always ask a client is, you know, what's your end goal, right? Mm-hmm. You know, what are you trying to achieve? And, and most of the time when we're doing visualization, right, for real estate developers, they, they're either wanna sell something, they wanna lease something, right?

Or they want to raise money for something to put a project together. So we're always trying to pinpoint [00:12:00] what's the emotional and differentiator piece about your project, and then we're gonna show that at the best time of day with the right. Uh, uh, with the right, you know, entourage and, and event happening, um, down to, you know, what, you know, what, what it's like, what angle is the sun at, right?

Like, we want to make sure that that every factor is showing the best point of that project at all times. Because not a lot of times do we get to do animations and movement, right? If we just get that one shot. And we get that one opportunity for, you know, for that still shot that's gonna be on a billboard, or it's gonna be on the front page of a website.

We have to make sure that it's the best moment that we can physically show how that building's gonna be operating. And that's, that's usually a conversation like, you know, we, we just did a project. It's a big mall conversion, right? But. You know where we're, we're converting. It's got 16 uses. Multifamily coming in right there.

It's an old mall in America that there just doesn't work anymore. Right? No one goes to the mall, at least the older ones. [00:13:00] So the, so we had to show a time where this mall's converted, but we're showing like a, an outdoor farmer's market happening at the time. The streets shut down with all the new architecture with, so to sell that emotion to showcase what it could be at its height.

Where there's thousands of people enjoying this space during a, during a festival, right? Like that's, but instead of just showing the buildings and showing some cars parked outside, right? That's cool. Mm-hmm. That's not the highest and best height of what that space could truly be for the end users. So we're trying to identify that and that, and, and having that intersection with architects, interior designers, urban planners in my office.

Right. Their, their thought process to get there is much quicker than just. Here's someone that'll do a rendering for you. Right. We we're, we're, we're problem solvers and we want to solve that problem for the client at the highest level. 

Mehmet: I love this approach. Now you mentioned, you, you just gave us the example of the tower and the drone and, and all this.

There must be some. [00:14:00] I, I'm not sure if the term should be, like, technical challenges or like, is it workflow challenges? Uh, like what are some of these challenges that usually might appear in, you know, such large scale, um, you know, uh, real estate projects. So of course you can build that in the virtual environment.

So what, what could be some of these charges? Is it like, uh, location constraints? Maybe? I don't know, like, uh. Well, data constraints. What, what that looks like. What's funny 

Brian: is, especially speaking on the drone stuff, you know, some of our projects, right? Our, our drone op, we, we had a drone at one point. We got rid of that.

'cause as our projects progressed, you know, you have to start reaching out to airports and things to get permission right and right course licensing and all that. So we've had some instances where like, you can't fly that 'cause it's too close to this thing or the government, you know, like we're doing government work.

Mehmet: Yeah. No 

Brian: fly zone. Can't put a Yeah, exactly. No fly zone stuff. Um, but uh, and the other challenges too, when you're out there, you know, you're trying to capture that right moment, right? If [00:15:00] it's bad weather, if it's raining, if it's right. So. You know, the virtual, the physical world isn't always captured in real time everywhere on the planet quite yet.

It will be someday, right? But like, I can't go and get that right moment for the real world, right when I need it. That's a challenge, right? So that's always something that we have to anticipate, you know, especially if we're going for these high end, you know, pictures, right? We need to give the client enough warning like, hey, like we might need a month to capture that right moment outside.

That then works with the, with the fit, with the, uh, virtual world. So, uh, that's, that's really some of the challenges that the, the constraints just in, in flow and how we make these images. You know, it's, it's a pretty standard process. So back and forth between a client, obviously we get their drawings, we're modeling at 3D, we're sending draft views, we're going back and forth on finishes.

It's an iterative process, right? But the end result's always the same. And it's an, it's an emotional storytelling masterpiece. And that's what we're going for every time with, with the vir, with the virtual delivery of assets. Right. [00:16:00] We need decide. It's all about that emotional sell. You need someone to see that and be like, I want to either be there or I wanna buy that.

Mehmet: Got it. Now, how, you know, big or small role? The, the immersive technologies like ar, vr, xr, you know, like, like, you know, like every day we, we are hearing like new names. Um, I nerd out 

Brian: over this stuff. This is like. You know, 'cause I, because my true skill, I, I'm a visionary, right? I could, I could be a visionary in any business, but I just love the passion of the virtual world.

'cause I, I grew up in it, right? Like, I was the first in there. I was raiding dungeons and playing first person shoes before anybody, right? Like, that was me. Uh, oh. 

Mehmet: Yeah. I, I, I should I, I, I should let my daughter let talk to you. Like she said this, 

Brian: a lot of, honestly, I could be a niche of mine. A lot of parents bring on their kids because they know my background.

They, they hear about it. Uh, I feel like I could inspire more people talking about that stuff too. But, um, yeah. But on the fact of, uh, I'm sorry, what was the [00:17:00] question? It was around, uh, 

Mehmet: yeah, so, so how much like ar, vr, oh, sorry, xr, you know, it plays a role in, in, in your domain and how it's evolving. So let tell you.

Brian: 'cause for me, the challenge for me is always looking at like, how's it work today? Right? Where my, where my skillset is. I know how it's about to be working and I've, I've predicted it every step of the way. Um, so for example, when, uh, when Apple came out with their vision headset, right? Like, mm-hmm. I must have got, I don't know, 10, 15 texts that they like, Brian, did you see that thing, Brian?

Did you see that thing? You, you mentioned that like a decade ago. Like, can you believe they put that out? Like what I said? Yeah. I went and tried it. I was like, this is gonna be a flop. And people are like, what? It's Apple. This thing isn't gonna, I'm like, it's gonna be a flop. This is not what's needed for the mass market.

This is not it. This is not it. Not even close. Mm-hmm. And everyone's like, you're full of shit. Literally this past week, I don't know if I can curse on my show. I'm sorry, but it's okay. This, this last week. What happened? They meta just crushed 'em Apple's shuttering their vision Pro again. [00:18:00] Right. And it's, and what I said to him, I said, the, the immersive AR needs to be a free flowing thing, right?

You can't give up your real vision. It has to work over top of it, and things need to be supplemented in augmented reality on top. When you look, when the difference between augmented reality and virtual reality, virtual reality is immersing you where you take away your complete vision and now you're in something new.

That is not a reality. Us as humans get motion sickness. I've tried it with multiple clients, it's just not a long-term. Real solution. It, it works for 10, 11, and 12 year olds that I could relate to back when I was that age growing up with it. Right? But AR is what's gonna be for the masses. And you're seeing that right now with META'S glasses they put out.

It's a super success. It is a cool product. It enhances your day-to-day, it allows you to be more efficient and just, you know, move a little quicker. Right? Not by, not by running, but by like getting back to people staying up to date with the world. Right? The Vision Pro doesn't do that unless you're sitting [00:19:00] on your couch eating popcorn, right?

It doesn't allow you moving and keeping going in the world. You're kind of stuck and you don't really know what's around you. Um. So the AR technologies is where we're seeing and where we're investing our time and energy on what's next, right? Like, I, I talk with people, I, I, they're like, Brian, where's the future of real estate in the built world?

Like, what's gonna be happening? I said, look, you're eventually gonna be walking down a main street corridor somewhere in the world, right? You're gonna look through that beautiful glass window on the front of the building. You're gonna look inside at a bar, restaurant. You're gonna see people in there, happy hour, drinking cheersing, having a good time.

You're then gonna walk through that front door to go meet in that experience, and there's gonna be nobody in the place. 

Mehmet: Mm-hmm. 

Brian: But the moment you get in there, you're gonna say, oh, first drinks on us with a purchase of an appetizer. This your, your world will start changing. You may even find other people that augment in front of you from other places in the world to create a bar like experience [00:20:00] within that built environment.

And what I've said to people like, what is Designblendzs doing? How are we gonna be part of that? Eventually, you're not gonna be able to just hire an architect to do your building. You're gonna need to hire, you know, a design strategist, a design technologist that understands how the built and virtual world work hand in hand, because that's the way the world's moving.

You're gonna be, now you're sitting in that restaurant, you're looking across the bar and you're like, what are those whiskeys on the shelf? I, I know it's brown. I, I see the brown liquid, but like, what is that one? I never heard of that. Then you're gonna look at it, you're gonna focus, it's gonna pop up in front of you in an augmented way and say, oh, that's whiskey from Kentucky.

That bottle's from 1840. It's a thousand dollars a glass. Right? Like, that's how the world's gonna come very rapidly in front of us. 

Mehmet: Yeah, it looks to me while you were describing that, uh, although like I have respect to Apple, but yeah, I felt with this one they were trying to, you know, like. When they say you put the, [00:21:00] the cart in front of the horse.

Yep. And it's like, it's trying to find a solution for something that doesn't exist. Right. So, so they were trying to find use cases and I was skeptical, like you and I, I think. Yeah. You and me were right because, you know, it's, and people, to your point, and they're gonna come back to this maybe later. Um, so they won't.

Something that also, it's not like just they want the coolness of the technology, right? They, they want to see real action, you know, real use cases out of it. Just not the coolness of that. So this is where it needs to be practical. 

Brian: Right, exactly. Like who, who exactly has thought that this device you could run your whole business on.

Mehmet: Exactly. That's 

Brian: why. It's successful. That's why any company can make one of these and continue it, because right now this is where you run your business on eventually this is gonna be outdated and you're gonna run your business from up here. Looking out. [00:22:00] 

Mehmet: I, I can see that, you know, talking to a lot of people on the show, and now you are one of them.

I can see this. Now let's talk a little bit about, uh, you know, more technology and innovation, right? Yeah. You mentioned ai. Uh, Brian, now. Uh, what exact role are you seeing AI is being able to play in the visualization or design pipeline? Is it like automation? Is it like kind of a co-pilot designer with you?

What are like some of the Yeah. Great. Great question. 

Brian: So like, I can't speak to every industry, right? I know how it's affecting my company and my industry right now. We're, you know, innovations in, in our core values and never settle. We're always trying to figure out how to do things quicker, better, higher quality, better experience for our customers every day in how we do things.

And. Every year I give a presentation to my staff, and in this year's presentation, I said, guys, one of the things we have to make sure we triple down on this year is understanding and learning is ai. I said, I don't want anyone in this room [00:23:00] to be afraid that AI is gonna take their job, because it's not, at least in our industry at the moment.

I said, but what will take your job is somebody utilizing ai. And like you could see like, people be like, wait, what? What do you mean by that? And then I went on to elaborate. I said, we need to just be more efficient with our time. Right. We know. What's the funnest part about, you know, architecture is the design portion, right.

Figuring out, making things really cool and not worrying about whether the door is exactly three feet or, you know, one meter. I I know I'm talking to an international crowd. Right. But, you know, those things, the, the, the monotonous parts of the design process are what we're focused on getting AI to help us.

Eliminate, and that's where, like for example, if I get a request for proposal, right, for a municipality and they send me a hundred page document. I can utilize AI to very rapidly strip that document down to the pieces that I need to understand to be more [00:24:00] effective about my submission back to that municipality to try to win that job.

When somebody sends, sends my team a question about our drawing set, I want to be able to query my, my chat bot that has all of our drawing sets and prior RFI questions built into it. To maybe get craft a response that's 90% accurate and you know, Jen just needs a little thought to move it forward, not have to have someone spend three hours trying to figure something out when it could be done in three minutes.

That's where I see AI enhancing, not just my industry, but a lot of industries. For the time being. But the, the, the unfortunate part is I don't even think the masses at this point know. They know about it, but they're not using it to their advantage quite yet. I, like, I've automated my email, like I barely do email any longer.

I do email, I, I probably deal with 10% of an email now 'cause I have AI crafted to a point where I just read it and say, oh, change that word send. [00:25:00] 

Mehmet: Right, right. 

Brian: Instead of sitting there trying to craft a creative email, I've now allowed AI to just do that for me and sort my inbox doing what it essentially an executive assistant would do for me.

Mehmet: Absolutely. What about the design part, Brian? Like, um, yeah, I can't remember the, yeah, so I think there are a couple of, there are a couple of, uh, attempts I would say. I can't remember the website. I'm sorry for that, but it's one of, uh, um. A couple of, you know, these, uh, solopreneurs on, on the internet, uh, who does this?

So they created these websites where you can, for example, give the photo of your room, right? Mm-hmm. And then it, it'll create kind of a design how the room will look like, or maybe Yeah, of course. Yeah. We, we saw like these kinds of thing. 

Brian: Um, so, so what I would say to that, right? I, and I look at those things and I say, wow, that, that's amazing.

How could I look at something like that and incorporate that into our. Our standard process for a design project, and I'll give you an [00:26:00] example 'cause we are doing it similar. When we get to the, let's just say we're doing an apartment building, right? And we get to the massing phase where like, all right, we know the height that this thing can be, the width, the depth.

We understand where we want some offsets, we understand where we wanna make some green space and open space in the project. Okay. Hey, Mr. Client, I'm curious, what types of materials do you like? Do you like brick, metal, right. Glass, right? The standard. Oh, I want to use this efis. Okay. What we'll then do is we'll take those comments and we'll bring it back to the design team and use AI to create a hundred iterations of, of facade ideas, right.

Then we narrow it down internally. We might present 10 of 'em to the client and we say, Hey, alright, we know you like this. What are your thoughts? And the client's gonna go, wow, I really like that and I like that. And it right. And it gets us to an end result much quicker as opposed to my team spinning and generating their own ideas around whatever they believe.

We now at least have a better form a direction. Now we take those things and now we get to go have [00:27:00] fun 'cause we know what the client wants and then we can get it there even better and quicker and more effectively. That's the way we're using it and just that's one way, but I like, again, it's, it's enhancing the experience for the client, making us more effective and allowing us to have more fun on projects.

Mehmet: Right. 

Brian: There's not, now, no one likes working on something for 16 hours. Like, oh, let me make 10 iterations of design, gonna spend two, three days doing it just for the client to be like, no, I don't like that. That hurts, that hurts designers 

Mehmet: at the core. Absolutely. Absolutely. I can relate. Like no one want, uh, someone to tell his work or her work like, yeah.

You know, I don't like it. Absolutely. Now, um. From your experience and, um, mainly real estate and, you know, like this, uh, this sector is considered a, a very old and, you know, traditional industry, right? Yep. Um, what do you think, uh, or have you seen the risks or the [00:28:00] pitfalls when pushing tech too fast? Uh, at once to a traditional industry such, you know, maybe, uh, architecture, design real estate.

And how do you manage that tension that might happen between people who would be pushing back, no, I don't want technology, uh, versus, uh, no, like showing the real value of what you're trying to achieve with the tech. 

Brian: I, you know, fortunately we've gotten to a placement met where it's needed, right? Like in the early days.

I can relate to that question because it was like, I don't need to pay thousands of dollars for visualization until, you know, you show the results. Right? You know, everyone's their own pessimist until they become an optimist when they see it. Right? They ha. Mm-hmm. Majority people are sheep, owls. They need to understand like.

They gotta see it and then they're gonna buy it, right? So one of the, one of the things that we started seeing early on with, with throwing technology into the real estate space here with, with visualization, was a lot of our clients started selling projects pre-construction, literally before they put a [00:29:00] shovel in the ground, right?

So traditionally how real estate was handled, right? Where, oh, we're gonna build a spec home and, or a couple of 'em, and then you're gonna walk 'em and you're gonna buy 'em. Early on, I'm talking back in like 13, 14, 15, we were doing visualizations to where some of my clients were pre-selling new construction, over 50% of the project before they started.

So we then showed those results. Then everyone started, well, wait, I wanna talk to that person. Then they started realizing it's, it's a reality. And, and I think you have to kind of show it now. Now here's, here's the flip side of jamming. Too much technology and things too quick. When the market's not ready for it.

Look what just happened to crypto and the blockchain, right? You have, right the whole NFT space, right? That was what's crazy is that is needed. It's gonna be here. It was just way too rapid. Way too quick, way too ahead of people's perception of the reality of the world. But I can assure [00:30:00] you that's gonna rapidly come back here as all this AI technology creates deep fakes and keeps pushing out content that we don't know what's real and what's fake.

You're gonna see that technology reemerge and actually become the gold standard to know what's real and what's not real in this world. 

Mehmet: I a hundred percent agree with you, and now I'm having these discussions with, uh, with people and, and you know, like I blame ourselves and I don't want to finger point to, to specific people, is that we create hype and people, you know, they, when they see like.

Hype. Uh, usually they overreact and they, yeah, as you said, like they try to avoid it. Like it happened to many things like, uh, blockchain and cryptos is one of them. I think AI is somehow, to your point, it became a necessity, but in some areas still, like we have, oh, like. Don't tell me yet another AI thing that's happening there.

I don't want to hear about it anymore. Right. Um, we have, unfortunately, and I was discussing this [00:31:00] in like two or three episodes ago, and again, you know. I don't know. We, we can't stop this, you know? Yeah. And I, by the way, I, I understand content creators. People consider me as a content creator. Yeah. The podcast is a, for me, you know, is a passion is, you know, a, a way of spreading knowledge, you know, learning from industry leaders like yourself, but I mean, you know, putting these, uh, formal effects and, you know, like these things and let people think, I think people are tired and bored from that.

They want to, to to hear like authentic things they want to, yeah. Listen to real use case scenarios that can, they can relate to. So to your point, 

Brian: yeah, and my, my bigger fear too, for a lot of people pushing AI and we're very careful with how we put out, uh, like blog articles and things because my fear is what's about to happen is, you know, the, the AI agents are gonna start like, you know, you think just 'cause you're writing blogs, you're building your website, SEOI actually think it's gonna get to the point where it's gonna know whether it's AI built or.

We're actually a human [00:32:00] being built and that the algorithms are gonna start separating the two Right. People that don't want the AI content consumption, it's gonna go away. It's just gonna become noise. Right? Right. And what's gonna actually become valuable are actually the people talking again. And so I think there's gonna be a ying to the yang of all of it.

Right? No, like, like I, I made a post actually on LinkedIn yesterday, 'cause I, you know, I was talking about how email's dead, like literally email's, the first major technology is about to be replaced by ai. Like hands down it is gone. There's no need to do your email anymore. You're wasting your time if you're sitting there for hours a day doing your email.

It's already been AI outsourced. But I said, and I made a ps. I said, if you're using long dashes and emojis in any sort of text, I don't believe it's real. And like people were loving. Like it was funny, right? 'cause that's what AI does when you craft articles, it adds fun, emojis, long dash. It's like, who types like that?

Nobody, right? And then I, I had one guy's like, oh, I, I've been using long dashes and I replied back. I said, yeah, I still don't think your stuff's real then, right? Like, it's, it's, it's, it's what's happening, right? So that [00:33:00] authenticity is gonna drive businesses more than ever. Right? And then what's, what? We met, what I mentioned to you, the blockchain portion.

There's gonna be people that someday create content about me, me talking, but it's not me. Right? Like the deep fakes. We're going into this era of like deep fake virtual imagery and, and animations and, and conversations. It's a scary place, in my opinion to go, but I actually think the only thing that's gonna save it is the blockchain because you're gonna know that that source is all authentic.

Mehmet: True, 

Brian: right? Like you see these news companies, Russia News, all the right. Whatever's out there, no one actually knows. Absolutely there's no truth. Or who knows? Is it, is it another government saying stuff to pe? Like, what's truly gonna, no one knows, right? No one knows. You don't know if it's real. You we're literally at a point where you don't know if that that thing is real, right?

Like, you know, and, and, and what's interesting, the virtual, the, the videos of things, right? And images of things have always defined history as have always defined. What? What happened, [00:34:00] right? The JFK really got shot. Yes. Oh he did. We saw the video, but now what's scary is you don't know if that video is real or not.

Yeah. And to the common eye, I can pick it out like this 'cause I've been in the space, but there's people that think that stuff's real still and that's a scary place for society to be. I and I believe rapidly you're gonna see blockchain implementation into almost our everyday life. 

Mehmet: A hundred percent. I agree.

I can promise the audience one thing, both Brian and myself, we are real guys. It's, it's not our, yeah, 

Brian: I'm real. My, I'm real. Uh, I'll show my hands. 'cause the AI can't do the fingers, right? Like that's. No, it's, I have five fingers here, not six coming out. 

Mehmet: It's, it's getting better. It's getting better at that.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, joke aside, Brian, and because you come from, um, you know, you, I mean, not, not from there, but you used to play a lot of video games, as you were mentioning in the beginning. Now. One thing [00:35:00] people still didn't understand myself, you know, or I understand it. Like, uh, about virtual real estate, right?

And so people, sometimes they're calling them the metaverse, digital twins call it whatever. Do you think, like, of course they're used today in marketing. They're used today, you know, in promoting. Do you think they, these. These digital twins, metaverse, uh, can become real. I mean, real assets where you and me, we can go end up buying, they 

Brian: will.

And, and here, here's where it is. So like, uh, I, I know meant like you meant like, uh, there's a, there's a platform out there called Decentral Land. I own some decentral land in my, my blockchain tech, right? Like I own virtual real estate and some of these platforms. When that NFT space was going on. And essentially what it was is you hop into this world, right?

You can build things on your parcel and people could come by and see your parcel. And it was cool, like people were using it as like a, uh, like a portfolio piece. Like there was artists in there, you know, promoting their work on their websites and things. You go and you, it's just, it was an interactive experience, a different [00:36:00] way to experience, you know, essentially web, Web3, right?

We're now web four, right? Moving past it, right? Yeah. So different experience. That's what these virtual worlds were. But here, here's, if I was the common person thinking. Who's gonna win, right? Yeah. There was, there was, at one point there was MySpace, right? Then there was Facebook and or the, it was called the Facebook.

Then it's Facebook, right? Like you, what you're gonna see is the conglomerates are going to be in charge, right? Facebook is not going anywhere. I would not be betting against them anytime soon, if anything. I'd be buying Facebook stock, like I was buying Nvidia stock back in 2016, right? Oh, you wanna, you want I believe Meta and, and, and Mark Z over there at Zuck.

I think he has the, the platform and ability to build the virtual real estate space. And what do I mean by that? Well, you, you know, I don't know if you've seen articles like, oh, people are gonna put, you know, something up in space and you're gonna see it like a digital billboard up in the space. [00:37:00] Back to that augmented reality that I mentioned previously.

Right? That's the world that's going to be the virtual real estate, right? And those platforms are gonna control that virtual real estate because. If it's the meta glasses, I'm now in the Meta Universe. I'm now in the Meta thelan to some extent, right? Or I take that off and now I put on the Google glasses.

Now I'm in the Google Metaverse, right? I take that one off and I put on what's next, the Nvidia one. There might be an Nvidia one, an Nvidia Metaverse, right? Those are the platforms that exist to get that out there and back to what I do, right? I'm just trying to be the Angry Birds app of that platform.

That's what I'm trying to do, right? I'm not trying to build that platform, but I'm trying to be someone that can help integrate within those platforms when that time comes. And I'd say it's coming within the next five to 10 years mass adoption of it, because the people that have that are gonna be at a very competitive advantage.

When I can walk past somebody and say, oh, that's Larry. I know Larry, right? Not having to remember that it's Larry, oh, that's Larry's wife, that's Sheila. I know [00:38:00] Sheila. So now I can go up and have a. Conversation like, Hey Sheila, good to see you. And she's like, how did he remember my name? It's because my augmented reality just showed me Sheila's LinkedIn Pro icon next to her face.

Right? Augmented reality, like that technology is already here and being tested, it's gonna be adopted here within years. Yeah. Like I, I think five years could be a lot. I think within three to four we could literally see meta glasses get to a point where like if you don't have meta glasses, you're already behind in conversation.

Mehmet: Uh, exciting time ahead, I would say. And, uh. So you, you, you, you said like you're 35, right, Brian? So, you know, for, for me, I've seen I'm, I'm 45 and I can't remember at least since I start to understand what's going, uh, in the world, like more exciting times than the times that we are living in now. Yeah.

That's wild. Where, where everything is, you know, changing on daily basis and you know, like before I used to argue with people, no, no, this cannot happen. This is like [00:39:00] 10 years until now. Even I stopped on the show and my luck is I start the podcast just I think one month after Chad, GPT came out to the world and, and I stopped asking, you know, the question that people ask, um, what trends we should see in the coming five Chinese, that's a funny 

Brian: word.

And 

Mehmet: no. Okay. So there are trends, but I, I ask current trends. I don't ask future because I tell, I tell people we, we can't predict future anymore. Yeah. Alright. Let me, 

Brian: let me tell you a current trend in the AI space that I would just be careful of, like today. Mm-hmm. Like you mentioned previously, you're seeing these solopreneurs come up with like, oh, this AI thing does this.

Mehmet: Right, right, right. Lemme, 

Brian: lemme tell you what's about to happen to all those AI things. Does this. Gonna be, you're just gonna need one. It's gonna do everything. If I wanna, if I wanna start a podcast, I'm gonna go on my chat bot and say, Hey, schedule ette to come on my podcast between this time and this time, set up a streamy yard and you know, make sure you Oh, yeah.

Cut the editing to happen after [00:40:00] it's gonna happen. Oh 

Mehmet: yeah, a hundred percent. 

Brian: All but I don't need the AI to do my podcast. I don't need my AI email bot. I, I will need one source. Absolutely. And that's, that's the scary part. 'cause now everyone's gonna have access to that one source. The challenge is gonna be, you know, can you afford the $200 a month chat, GPT or the $20 a month chat, GPT, that's where the differentiator's gonna be happening because I can assure you the paid version of chat, GPT does things that the unpaid can't.

I'll give you, I'll give you a real example. There was, I had someone in my office create a logo they had left and I couldn't figure out the text. I asked the same question to the unpaid version of chat g Bt I said, Hey, take this logo. What's the text that they use to create this logo? It couldn't gimme a real answer.

I then took it to the $20 paid chat GBT version asked the same prompt, same image that found the text. Mm. So the, so that's, that's what's gonna be, so the trend of current trend to watch out for is don't get so caught up in these solo projects. They're like, oh, this AI thing's gonna [00:41:00] change my life very shortly.

It's all gonna be together. It's just, you're gonna figure out which one you can afford to be better. You're gonna have the $0 one to the $20,000 a month one. Mark my words. 

Mehmet: We started to hear about this, you know. Started to hear, I, I, I'm, I'm sure open AI andro, Google, they, they, of course they are preparing us, so they, they raise it from 20, I mean, for the pro one.

And then you have, you know, the, the $200 one and funny how all of them, they, they use the same price tag almost, which is, you know, and I think this is just a. Framing for us to prepare for what's next, 

Brian: but think of business owners, right? Like what's happening, right? If you're an executive assistant right now, I'd be worried.

I would very much be worried. 

Mehmet: Oh yeah. 

Brian: Right. But if you're a business owner. Could you buy the executive assistant bot? What does that cost you compared to the cost of having an executive assistant? I'm talking, it's gonna get to the point where I [00:42:00] have a fake avatar that's showing up on Zoom calls, screening people for my jobs.

And you think it's a real person, but it's not. 

Mehmet: That's about percent. A hundred percent. Right. And now, you know, they started to, you know, to open air announce their agent framework. And this is exactly, you know, it's a Jarvis mo moment where like you have someone, you just, as you mentioned, like ask anything you want to do.

Regardless of what is it, and it, it would be able to go and figure it out. Yeah. So this, no, no, this is coming. Uh, and by the way, for, you know, and this is for the audience, you can go back, I think two years or more the first time I start to see people working on these agents and, you know, automating AI and letting like multiple AI speak together.

Yep. And I, I said, guys, mark my word, this is, this is the future. And everyone like was laughing. Like, uh, like you are like, uh, you're watching too much sci-fi. I said, guys, it's not sci-fi. Like it's something that is possible. You just need someone to come and put it [00:43:00] all together. That's it. So, yeah. Brian, I want to ask you something not related to tech, but something related to, you know, scaling the business.

Yeah. And uh, Designblendz. Grown significantly, uh, based on my research, like, uh, appeared on the Inc 5,000 and it, it's not, it's, it's like, it's, it's milestone. So what was the hardest part, uh, in scaling the business? Was it like finding talent? Was it the culture? Was it the quality? What was that? 

Brian: Look, the, the funny thing about that is like, I chose p everything's hard, right?

Nothing good comes easy, right? But the 

Mehmet: hardest, 

Brian: I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell you the hardest 'cause because I also mentor a lot of entrepreneurs getting outta the gate wanting to do something. One person, maybe two. How do you get to that next level? And I say the one thing I've learned quick, and look, I have mentors that have guided me, right?

I didn't figure it all out my own right. That's the passing of the torch. If I look back at all my experiences of how I grew fast, and I said the times I grew best [00:44:00] is when I let go. What do I mean by that? Right. When I, and I joke now with clients about letting go, right? Like, I, I literally had a networking event last night.

I, I, I have my favorite line. I said, my team doesn't let me pick the brick colors anymore. Right? Like, I, you know, they, I, I've, I've learned to delegate and allow other people to do things, and that's the only true way to scale. And I see most entrepreneurs, they can't get out of their own way. They're literally their biggest inhibitor of their own success.

What they need to be focused on is, to your point. Building the team, building the culture and the vision of where you're heading, right? If you do that correctly, you build the right team. You have the right vision and right culture and core values. It runs itself to, to some extent, right? But like my team is working on 200, some projects out behind this wall here.

I maybe know about five or six of them. Because they're the largest ones. I'm, I'm, I'm involved in the largest ones, right? I, the client relations, things like that. Making sure that we're not gonna screw 'em up watching, watching things from a high level on the sixth largest. [00:45:00] But if I had to worry about 200 of them, there's no way I'm gonna go from 30 people to 50 people to a hundred to a thousand people someday in national firm, right?

That's, that's the biggest challenge and the hardest thing for any operator to do is figuring out a way to remove themselves from the day to day. And it is not easy. There's no magic pill. There's no therapist you can talk to. I can assure you that. It's just something you have to constantly know and, and work towards trying to achieve it and try to get 1% better a day and compound that interest.

And that's, that's the best thing I can tell any entrepreneur that's trying to grow and scale. You gotta learn to delegate. You gotta learn to remove yourself 'cause you are the biggest inhibitor of your own success. 

Mehmet: You, you know, you nailed it, I would say because I see a lot of entrepreneurs, um. Like you are a practitioner also, Brian, I consider you a practitioner in a way because, you know, you, you had the passion for this.

Uh, and I used to do the renderings. 

Brian: I used to [00:46:00] do the work. Exactly, 

Mehmet: exactly. And I know how tough it is to give. Some of the thing that we think, oh, we are the best to do it. I won't trust anyone other than me doing that. And I see a lot of entrepreneurs fall in this trap where they are not able to delegate.

To your point. Yeah. And they get and they get stuck. And I think here. What I sensed, you know, from, from our conversation today, you put a lot of trust in your team. Mm-hmm. You, you, you trust also your guts that I selected the right people to work with me, so I don't need to go and check on them like every single moment.

Right. So, and I think this is, this is, this is, you know, one of the main traits of successful entrepreneurs that you had. You know, anything you want to add on that thought, Brian? 

Brian: Look, I, I think down to, you gotta be careful about the, um, the trust piece, right? 'cause [00:47:00] you, you, you could say you trust your people, but are you over their shoulder worried about the size of a fawn on a document, right?

Are you micromanaging them to the point where like, they don't feel like they're trusted? You gotta be careful about that. The, the one thing I would say, um, to that point to trying to help to get someone out of the doing and, and then working on growing, right? Because, you know, my team doesn't want me doing 'cause they know if I'm doing.

We're not finding the next project, we're not moving the firm forward. We're not scaling or looking to acquire the next company, right? 'cause I'm focused on that brick color. Does that make sense? Right. One of the things, what I do and my leadership team does here at a high level, is we manage expectations, not people.

The expectations love it, is that this deliverable is done at this date and at my desk for review on this date and this time. I don't care how long it takes you to do it. I don't care if it's one hour or a hundred hours. It needs to be here at this time. Here's the expectation, and those expectations are realistic, right?

Don't want me wrong. We're not trying to create [00:48:00] unrealistic expectation, but if the expectation's realistic and that expectation doesn't get met, then there's a conversation. You don't need to have a conversation unless that expectation isn't being met, but what some solopreneurs are doing, and as they're trying to, they're not setting realistic expectations for their team to actually hit, 

Mehmet: right?

It's uh. It's like the vibe coding thing, right? So you just try to do things. But yeah, I, I like, you know, you manage expectations. You don't manage team. Now, let ask you, Brian, uh. Plans for expansion, whether nationally, internationally? Yeah. 

Brian: Great. Great question. Um, look, one of, one of the, uh, you know, it's, I look at is, you know, you can look at it as a detriment or a, an opportunity.

Obviously I, I'm always a glass half full type of guy, right? Um, but right now in the architecture industry, it's, it's a scary place to be. And here's why. Um, back in 2008, right? The us the world went to, you know, massive [00:49:00] economic, you know, deta, uh, uh, catastrophe, right? Fortunately at that time, that was my freshman year of college into architecture school.

So, but I was having professors come into the world going, yeah, I just got laid off today. This is my only job. I'm teaching a class three days a week. Right? Another I got laid off. I'm like, what the hell is going on? I'm like, you know, living in a bubble of college. I don't know what's going on in the world.

All I see is my professors coming in and getting laid off. Well, what happened during that time, right? If you go back to 2008 realm, a lot of architects and designers left the profession completely. They went off and never came back. As things got better, they couldn't afford to sit around for 3, 4, 5 years while the economy started coming back again from that.

So what that created is a massive gap in the architectural industry. So if I, if I, as I'm, if I wanna hire someone with. 20 years experience right now that can manage projects. Those people are not easy to find because there's so few of them. [00:50:00] Because of that gap that was created back in oh eight, I now need someone, you know, it's 20, 25 years experience.

They're hard to come by and I, and that, that RA age range right now is someone in that 40 to 55 zone. They're almost non, non, they're almost irrelevant compared to the mass amount of older, right? Older, um, you know, architects from 55 to, you know, towards retirement. And then also the ones from 23 just graduated college to, you know, 40.

There's an oversupply. In between is missing. And that's the, that's the the ones you really need to help grow the firms because you need that middle management level where they've had the experience. They can train the team, they can educate the staff, get the younger staff up to speed, and then learn still from the older staff and keep growing up to that principal level.

So there's a massive issue right now in the industry. I don't, I, I don't know if it's globally, obviously, I just look what's happening in, in, in, in [00:51:00] my area here. But what I'm doing to get around that is, the only way I know I'm gonna truly scale long-term and grow is do that through acquisition. Mm-hmm.

And do it through m and a space. Buying up firms of operators that might have fi five to 10 people, they're at their last, you know, last, uh, you know, sprint. Right? They're like, I, I'm done after this. Those are the firms that I'm looking to identify, to acquire and, and roll under our umbrella to keep, you know, moving to other cities and, and continue to grow here in Philadelphia.

Mehmet: Good to know. Uh, Brian, you know, like we can go for hours and hours. Your, your discussion with you is really, um, you know, um, I would say giving some flavor to the podcast because I like the way you, you also not only answering, you're just trying also to, to, to give us, uh. A holistic view Yeah. About your industry and about the technology innovation.

A a as well final, classical traditional question where people [00:52:00] can get in touch. 

Brian: Awesome. Um, so there's a few different ways. If you, if you come to me via email, there's gonna be an automated response, but it'll send you a booking link. Uh, that's, that's brian@designblends.com with a Z at the end. Designblendzs with a z.

Um, honestly, the best way to reach me and I always get back to people 'cause I just like the way it formats is on Instagram. You could follow me at Coca on Instagram. Send me a direct message. I will set up a time, send you a booking link. We'll get together and chat for 15 at a minimum. Um, and then obviously if you're, you're interested in seeing what our company does, just go to www.Designblendzs.com.

Uh, take a look at some of the cool virtual and physical things we're working on in the world. 

Mehmet: Cool. Uh, for the audience, you don't have to go and look around. I'm gonna put all the links that Brian mentioned, the show break down, right? Yeah. In the show notes. So it depends, uh, where they are consuming this episode.

If on any of the podcasting, uh, apps, it's in the show notes. On YouTube, you're gonna see it in [00:53:00] description below, as you mentioned. Exactly. And this is how I end my episode. This is for the audience. Uh, if you just discovered us just now by luck, thank you for passing by. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did so, give me a small favor, subscribe and share it with your friends and colleagues.

We are trying to do an impact with this podcast, bringing, you know, thought leaders. Entrepreneurs like Brian from different domains. Like today, we talked about visualization, uh, and you know, all the things that Brian told us about ar vr and also like how blockchain gonna, uh, play a role in, in, in, uh, avoiding defects in the future.

So you can see we trying to add value here. I appreciate your help if you can spread the word and if you are one of the loyal fan. Thank you very much for your support. I can't thank everyone enough because I'm repeating myself every episode. I know you must get bored from me by this time. Um, we are not leaving a week [00:54:00] without the podcast being in the top 200 charts in the Apple Podcast entrepreneurship category in one of the countries.

So we keep changing countries. So, and this is cannot happen without people are actually listening and consuming the content. Thank you very much for this, and I'm still waiting for my friends in the us. I'm waiting to see the podcast. Somehow even. I'm, I'm happy with 200, but at least let's, let's do the first breakthrough and thank you also for the support on launching, uh, the book last month, uh, from nowhere to next.

You can grab it from amazon.com and as I say, always stay tuned for any episode very soon. Thank you. Bye-bye.