The Wireless Way, with Chris Whitaker
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Welcome to the Wireless Way, a podcast designed for individuals interested in learning how technology is used to help us all become more efficient and effective leveraging the latest in technology. Each episode we learn about the journey of each guest and how technology has played a part in their adventure.
The Wireless Way is a show tailored for technology advisors and consultants, with a singular aim: to enrich and empower our valued partners. Join us on this journey of growth and learning.
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The Wireless Way, with Chris Whitaker
Blending Humanity and AI: Redhawk Technologies' Unique Approach, a conversation with CEO Matt Strippelhoff
Blending Human Ingenuity and AI in Digital Transformation with Matt of Red Hawk Technologies
In this episode of The Wireless Way, host Chris Whitaker welcomes Matt, the CEO and co-founder of Red Hawk Technologies. They explore Matt's journey from a musician to a tech leader, his vision for digital transformation, and how Red Hawk's unique 'development as a service' model supports mid-market companies. Matt shares insights into blending AI with human creativity in the development process, AI's role in modern software engineering, and ensuring data integrity in IOT solutions. The episode concludes with advice for companies on navigating digital transformation, the impact of AI on the workforce, and recommended reads for business leaders.
00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:21 Matt's Background and Red Hawk Technologies
00:43 The Concept of Digital Transformation
01:59 Matt's Musical Journey
05:36 AI and Human Creativity in Development
10:22 Ideal Clients for Red Hawk Technologies
12:06 Digital Transformation and AI Readiness
15:52 Exploring IoT and Data Integrity
17:01 Challenges in IoT Implementation
20:11 The Role of AI in IoT Solutions
22:05 Red Hawk's Development as a Service Model
27:22 Advice for Embracing Digital Transformation
28:59 Final Thoughts and Book Recommendations
Book mentioned- Gap and the Gain
Check out my website https://thewirelessway.net/ use the contact button to send request and feedback.
Hey, welcome to another episode of The Wireless Way. I'm your host, Chris Whitaker, and, yes, grateful that you're here, but even, equally grateful, for Matt He's my guest today. He's the partner and CEO of Red Hawk Technologies. a little bit about him before I bring him on. Matt, is a visionary, And co-founder of Redhawk Technologies, an award-winning software development firm based in Wilder, Kentucky, with a background in communication design, and over two decades of experience in traditional and interactive media. Matt has led Redhawk to become a trusted partner for mid-market companies seeking digital transformation. And that's the word we're gonna unpack here digital transformation. We've all heard it at some point. What does that mean to you and how does Redhawk and Matt define that? We're gonna get into that. under his leadership, Redhawk has pioneered a disruptive development as a service model. Pretty unique there. that software development, maintenance, and support into a single fixed monthly fee. That sounds really good. offering clients financial, predictability and long-term value. this innovative approach has driven significant growth, secured, multi-year recurring revenue contracts, and achieved over 95% customer retention. All the words we all love. if you've been listening to this show for some time. So today, Matt will share insights on blending AI with human element in the development process and discuss their journey from an idea, for an app, you know, from a development perspective. Matt, welcome to show. I'm glad we were able to get this, on the books and meet today.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:Chris, it's great to be here. I really appreciate it.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:No, likewise. I mean, especially, when we first got introduced together, I saw what you were doing and was just very intrigued by it. as a tech enthusiast, we were kind of joking pre-show, you know, AI is all the buzz. and even before I get into that, I still gotta ask my traditional first question. I almost jumped straight in, but I still wanna know what's not the bio. How did you get to where you are today?
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:What's not in the bio and how did I get, okay, I'll answer the first question
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Sure.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:the first que what's not in the bio. I was a rock
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:I,
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:for a day. I have had 15 minutes of fame in 1999 when my band opened up for Lili Affair.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:yeah.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:all female rock lineup
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Yeah.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:My band was selected as a regional artist in greater Cincinnati.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Wow.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:So we had backstage passes, meal passes. I was on all the stages at different points in time throughout the day. Met all the artists, hung out Chrissy Hines and the Pretenders and Indigo girls, Sarah, who was amazing. And Christina Aguilera took the stage right after we did. because she had just released her first single, so this was a really long time ago, but it was a lot of fun. So that's what's not in a bio.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Well, okay. and what's not in your explanation is what happened next? why was that only your 15 minutes of fame? Do you just get tired of performing or what?
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:You know, we were probably, gosh, I'd been playing in, in a band probably 10, 12 years at that point in time. And that was right at the intersection where my career was starting to kind of take off on the tech side. my first, born was, a few months old, soon after that show, and I'm like, what do I do? Do I get in a van with these guys and tour around and try and make something happen? or do I focus on the technology track and career oriented? honestly, I love the recording and the writing and the studio work. Performing was fun for me, but it wasn't where I got my energy, so I decided that I needed to just focus on my career at that point
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:are you still performing or playing at least?
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:you know, my guitars are collecting dust hanging on the wall. Sometimes I look at'em, I'm so busy right now, but I think that's gonna be something I get back to in retirement.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:No, you should. Yeah. It's funny too, and I know you don't have'em hanging behind you. I see a lot of artists, you know, musicians will have the guitars hanging in their, in their Zoom or teams,
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:Yeah.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:I love live music, though. I love.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:Oh.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:I love the fact that some people are just gifted with that ability to get the crowd going, get your mind, you know, take you back to a different time through song. So I appreciate what you do. was that a hard decision for you and was, did, was it like a no brainer or did you have to wrestle with that for a little bit?
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:I had to wrestle with, what letting go of that really meant. I didn't have to wrestle with not getting in a van and touring. I really wasn't interested in doing that. I think at that point, if it happened five years earlier, I probably would've pursued that. but I think. Not pursuing it further also meant that it felt like end of the road, you know, like we could continue to play locally and do some gigs and festivals and write and put some music out. And I think that was the harder part is letting go of that part of it. Eventually I left the band.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Got it. So do you still write or have you written stuff in the past?
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:yeah, in that band, the singer, she was an amazing poet and she wrote all of the lyrics generally she and I would work things out and then we would introduce a song or two or three to the rest of the band, the rhythm section, and we'd just kind of all work on it together collaboratively. I did write lyrics for a few of the songs, but, my passion was really just. Riffs, man. I just loved grabbing the guitar and just coming up with riffs. I can't even read music. I would just
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Oh wow.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:my way through it, you know? And yeah, it was a lot of fun.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:so people listening to this episode right now know you.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:Mm-hmm.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Will they know this story, or would this be a surprise to some?
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:people that know me and my, probably the longest, and this is
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Well, no.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:Yeah.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Yeah,
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:could listen to our music on Spotify.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Ooh. All right. we have to put that link in the show notes. What was the name of the band?
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:Grace in gravity.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Grace in Gravity. Well, that's kind of a deep one there as well. but yeah, I, I, you know. I could, I see me taking this conversation down a totally different rabbit hole that we, we discussed earlier, but I, I, I wanna stick to the point here'cause I am still very interested in what you, are doing, with Redhawk Technologies. You know, a post on your website, beyond the Hype, and I'll put this in the show notes too. There's a post you have on your website, it's called Beyond the Hype AI Coding versus Human Experience.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:Yeah.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:think that's kind of, that, that's a good eye-catching title. you emphasize that AI is, the great homogenizer and lacks true creativity. And coming from a guy that is an artist, that means a lot more to me than if you were not an artist, I believe. so what specific steps or processes do you use at Redhawk to, preserve that human ingenuity and ensure that projects don't fall into that, you know, that AI. Complacency that you, you do see from time to time.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:So we use AI tools in a very cautious, careful manner. at the end of the day, everybody understands in our organization that they're responsible for the final output. AI is nothing more than a tool
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Don't blame the tool right.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:Yes, that's right. You can't blame the tool. You're responsible for whatever the output is. And then, you know, right now, because things are changing so fast, we expect that we might have to evaluate the tools that we're using every quarter. At this point, because the tools are improving and changing very, very quickly, for us, the AI will answer questions. That's what generative AI is doing. It's designed by nature to give you a response, right, wrong, correct, incorrect. It might mislead you, it might make things up. So, that's largely predicated on the tool that you're using and how you're using it. And so we're being very careful about the tools. right now we're exploring different tools and having quite a bit of success in some areas throughout the software development life cycle. So we look at it in terms of segmenting things out. So in the sales engineering process, understanding what the business need is. What value it's gonna generate for the customer and getting the q and a correct and really dialing that in. And then limiting how much of the information we put into a large language model. And then, using that with some prompts that we've stored in a library to help us get to value proposition statements, detailed project requirements, documents, et cetera. So that's where the human is involved because we know the questions to ask, how to uncover the opportunities. asking challenging questions. So oftentimes not gonna ask you the questions. it's giving you responses to the questions that you're asking of it.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Right.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:really need individuals like we have in our organization and others. You really need your subject matter experts to be the leaders in those conversations, not just on AI I think it's as important. To have quality input that you're putting into an AI model as it is, what questions you ask of it, if that makes sense.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:It does well, and a couple things you said, one, I like, having that library of prompts,'cause I'm learning as I use ai, how to refine it and tweak it, to get closer to what I'm looking for. And another analogy, you being a, musician, what's probably one of the most expensive famous guitars out there? Was it a Fender Stratocaster, or am I getting that right?
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:Well, it depends on the make and model in the year.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Right.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:Gibson Les Paul Customs are
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:There you go.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:my favorites. the old Martin acoustics are pretty expensive these days, if you can find them.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Yeah. So let's take that. I mean that by itself sitting in the case are on the shelf. What value does it have? put it in the hands of someone that knows how to play it. Now we're talking, so is AI kind of the same way? It's really in the hands of who's using it, I mean, determine the value of the outputs.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:You know, there's so much hype out there right now, specifically around vibe coding. the whole concept of vibe coding is. derived from this idea that you're vibing with the AI tool that you're using to output some custom application. You're seeing all this, marketing advertising around those platforms. They're all sort of in this race right now trying to figure out who's gonna win, in the marketplace. And they're promising no code that are production ready. And there's a lot of people using those tools that have no engineering expertise, no expertise at all. The, what they're actually generating is probably closer to proofs of concept that would have to be completely rewritten or refactored as opposed to something that's actually production ready because they don't know how to play the instrument as it were,
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Right. That makes a lot of sense. I almost feel like, oh, apology kind of glossed over. I mean,
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:no worries.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Technologies. what is an ideal customer profile for Redhawk? what kind of client would best be served by working with you?
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:Privately owned mid-market companies that are growth oriented and embracing technology to compete and win in their market. So those are generally
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:I.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:services firms. we do have some manufacturing clients as well, but the reason that it's privately owned and, mid-market, why that's important to us, it's because of our unique business model that software development is a managed service. We're the only software consultancy in the world as far as we can tell from our research that has this model. And, it works extremely well in that space. Where it doesn't work is enterprise. Enterprise clients have internal software engineering teams. They have, delivery operations practices around that, and they're better suited, to work with software consultancies that provide staff augmentation services. So they'll help. Add to your team for an extended period of time, help you build something. and that's all well and good mid-market. They can't really, they can't get that type of value from a staff org relationship because they don't know how to manage those butts and seats. And that's really all they're getting from a staff, a providers butts in seats and they have to figure out how to get value from them. If you don't have DevOps in-house delivery operations and you don't have leaders who understand software development, you're not gonna get value from those folks.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:it is almost going back to that analogy. It's like a recording studio and the instruments. If you don't have any musicians there, you got nothing. You just got a big bill. so do you have clients like calling, going, Hey, we're struggling with digital transformation and we need ai. I kinda get those calls sometimes and I'm go like, whoa, let's back up. I got a lot more questions. how do you guys deal with that? we mentioned digital transformation earlier. and that's been a topic for many years now, and it kind of, means different things to different people sometimes. what are you seeing a trend with your clients that, what does the current state look like versus their desired state?
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:it's evolving right now. What we're seeing is, maybe go back a year or so, maybe a little less than that in some circumstances. And, the clients are all very excited about embracing ai. When we start getting into a little bit of a discovery engagement, oftentimes what we find out is they are not ready for it. So the common thread here with digital transformation, you know, which is a term that's been in the industry for a long time, is data. The quality of your data, the quality of your processes around that data is gonna determine your readiness for digital transformation, really of any type. From machine learning to true ai, a lot of times people are blending those concepts. You can put rules, engines in place and do a lot of workflow automation with machine learning. It's not even ai
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Right.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:that's still the best course of action.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Interesting.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:Yeah.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Yeah, so the difference being machine learning is taking actual data and facts and come to a conclusion, whereas ai, if it doesn't have the facts, it's called a hallucination, right? Where it would just kind of fill in the gap and present it as a accurate, finished product. Is that a fair statement?
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:It's a fair statement. Absolutely. So if you're looking for, automating, cashflow modeling application or something like that, maybe something for the C-suite, you're probably gonna get a lot more value from, coding the algorithms and the formulas doing, you know, machine learning. of solutions where you're gathering in a very rules based way. You're gathering the data from the various sources. You're applying those rules. You've got a business logic layer that's separate from the code that you can, you can look at and really challenge and understand and logs, et cetera. you just pump all that, all those bits of information from those different data sources into a model and ask AI to generate a financial. Statement of some kind. I wouldn't trust it. I would be very concerned.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Yeah, well you, you know, even for me when I,'cause I use AI quite a bit as a content creator, and I'm a, my day job is I'm an advisor to advisors. I consult consultants on technology and, and, and I get asked a lot about one-pager and discovery questions and it's like, yeah, I could do it. I mean, I can sit down for an hour and really come up with a really thoughtful, customized approach for a very specific vertical industry. But, yeah, using. My good old friend Chad, GVT, with all the prompts, I know how to ask it. And if anything, once in a while it'll spit out something. I'm like, huh, I never thought about that. let me unpack that a little bit and let me fact check it and, oh wow. That's actually correct. I mean, I feel like sometimes, again, it's a tool, it's like a faus or a dictionary or encyclopedia, you know, it's taking the data that's out there and kind of challenging either my way of thinking. I feel like 90% of the time I'll look at it, go, yep, that's exactly what I would've written. That's pretty darn close. maybe I gotta tweak a few words that I would never use I put in some flowery language that no one's using. Got gotta fix that.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:Yeah. Yeah, that's a great
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:No.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:use it. what's interesting to me is seeing all of these, AI products coming out that are really wrappers that sit on top of those large language
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Mm-hmm.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:and those tools. about it. I think wrapper is a good way to think about it because you're wrapping, a specific, series of, a process more or less. you're putting this wrapper around a large language model. and it puts the person on rail. So you're seeing these products come out that are research specific or,
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Yes.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:types of content specific,
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Marketing or
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:in a sequence of events to get a specific type of output. It's really fascinating.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:it is,
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:Yeah.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:you mentioned something earlier about data and it got me thinking. I mean, as an IOT enthusiast myself, you know, the whole idea of I ot, this Internet of things, all these sensors. Third, only one purpose really is collecting data. there's an, incredible amount of data being collected by all these sensors. Fleet tracking, asset tracking, preventive maintenance, AI video. I mean, there's so much information out there and data integrity. You gotta be concerned about that too. It's like, where's this, data coming from. if you're a manufacturing firm and you have a plant and you have sensors collecting data on your assembly line and your production rate and your quality control and all, that's the kind of data you're interested in. it has to be actionable data. It has to be data that you can do something with.'cause you know, knowing how many times a valve turns on and off, well that's great, but whatcha gonna do with that information? I do feel like IOT does collect just a ton of data that helps business leaders make better decisions, and I'm sure all that data now is being fed into ai. do you guys see much in iot or you play with any iot solutions or clients?
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. There's, you know, one story comes to mind where we were part of, we were included in an RFP process with two other competitors, and we were looking at the RFP and it's an I-O-I-O-T play for sure. And, this was for a solution in the medical industry. I can't divulge too much. What I can
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Sure.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:that it had to do with monitoring and triggering alarms based on humidity sensors that were little pucks that, RFID, you know, they would just, send out a signal with the current measurement of humidity in a given environment. And, that was a fun one for us. Unfortunately didn't work out well for the client. simply because they had made a lot of assumptions. They didn't manufacture those devices.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Hmm.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:They were just critical to their larger vision. And instead of, responding the RFP, the way that it was drafted and where we were required to respond to it, we simply, politely declined and offered an alternative approach for, a feasibility study instead.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Oh yeah.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:Yeah. And you know, some of the assumptions they made that might catch your attention, given that you're interested in the iot stuff.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Yeah.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:assumed how those pucks would behave when the battery became closer and closer to end of life. They just assumed they would just stop reporting data. they assumed that all the pucks would, report exactly the same data if they were in the same environment. That was wrong because there's these tolerances that happen. anyway, the short story is we put together a visual dashboard where we collected data from 12 of these pucks and we measured performance over 90 days. And what we found was that, the tolerance between one puck to another in terms of the humidity levels was pretty dramatic. They weren't very accurate. That was a problem really
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:problem.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:a medical environment. You, based on what they wanted to do, it had to be really accurate. And the other thing that we've learned is that as. These pucks approached, of battery. The data became erratic, way less accurate, and the frequency it reported data was sporadic. Eventually they would just stop reporting data, but because of those issues and that IOT, solution, stopped, they did not pursue that initiative, which is good. Sometimes you need to fail fast.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Yes.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:The CEO was on track. Based on the way the RFP was written. They were on track to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in marketing leading up to a conference, and they wanted to have the solution done in time for the conference, they wanted screen shots of the finished application,
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Yeah.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:It's like we didn't wanna be part of that.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:No, no. Yeah, you don't wanna rush. Well, and you know, there's some stat, I may get it wrong, but it's like 65% of iot and initiatives never make it to fruition because of stuff like that. You know, normally you got multiple vendors involved, a
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:Yep.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:of, a lot of cooks in the kitchen, as we say here in Georgia. and that, that's a problem. It always matters who you partner with. You know, sticking with our music theme, it matters who you have in the band. I mean, whether it different personalities or just skills. You know, having a, lead singer that's a poet that really helps, have someone that knows how to work with the words.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:I'll bring this back to ai. We were talking about, the quality of the output is based on the person using the tool, the musician in the studio, all these analogies that were coming up
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Sure.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:This is another great example because the other two. companies responded to the RFP, the way that it was drafted and were ready to begin work and marching down that road. And, know, what Redhawk did was challenge the assumptions that were buried in the RFP and say, well, if these things aren't true, then this whole thing's a house of cards. Let's focus on that first. And if you take people out of that conversation and you turn to AI tools to do vibe coding, what if. This was a this, this initiative didn't really suit it well. But what if the visionary leader says, well, I'm gonna use AI to create something. Well, they're bringing all their bias into that conversation.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Right.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:You need expertise on the other side and not AI expertise to challenge what your vision is and say, well, hmm, you know, that's really interesting. But based on our experience in iot. And software engineering. Here's some risks that you are probably not aware of, because just human beings in general, right? We don't know what we don't know. We bring our own bias into every conversation we have.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:That's right.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:And AI, I don't think is quite there yet in terms of challenging your bias, Chris, or my bias.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:That's right.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:it's designed to give us what we ask for. It's just, I want X. Here it's.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:That's right. God, that is, spot on. you know, unless I get you, I've heard the stories even, or, you know, if you're trying to get AI to give you an opinion about something political or some, kind of societal, conflict, you know, it was taught. I don't talk about that, you know,
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:Yeah.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:I, sorry. Can't help you with that one. The 10 foot ball,
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:Yep.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:may up your own mind. too funny, you know, ki kind of changing gears just a little bit. I, I, going back into the core of Red Hawk. so Red Hawk's development as a service model. We mentioned earlier, you know, security, again, you have this amazing stat of, you know, multi-year recurring revenue and 95% cl client retention. you know, from your perspective, from the top, you know, how do you balance long-term commitments with the agility needed to quickly, prototype or pivot when, integrating AI driven tools?
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:It is, but I understand where you're tracking. So what's nice about our contracts is that our job is to, work with leaders within the organization and continuously improve and, deliver value. So improve would be if there's applications already part of their IT portfolio. We're making improvements, we're keeping them secure. updating, frameworks, packages, libraries. We're doing the maintenance. We're providing the technical support, if it's generating new or additional value, that's where some of the new, machine learning and AI initiatives are coming into the conversation more and more. And, we have the capacity under these contracts to create new things, not just support what's already in the portfolio. And the agility is just built into the model. we are delivering under an agile methodology. A software development lifecycle, which we're retooling to incorporate trusted AI tools as coding assistance, not leading the coding, but assisting with the coding. So we're actually in a position to deliver more value at a faster pace. For example, we're working on a, a, a, have a case study out here soon, but we're working on a, iOS and Android application with a web application for a client headquartered out of Los Angeles. very close to the finish line. We'll be launching later this week. there's a rather significant feature that they approached us about, adding to the scope about two and a half weeks ago. And looking at it from a traditional perspective, we estimated maybe 65 hours of engineering just to get to a prototype of that feature.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Mm.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:We took advantage of some of the new, tooling that's coming out. specifically for this example, we used Claude Code by Anthropic. And, it's MCP environment. we provided the context. It needed to be a really good assistant to the engineering team, in 25 hours we had a near production ready solution, whereas previously we thought it was gonna be 65 hours of engineering just to get to a p. So that's the type of throughput that we're seeing in terms of increased, throughput. Really, it's, and the quality's there if you're using the right tools, the quality's there.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Interesting. That, that's a fascinating stat. Do you see AI replacing employees or is it just making your current employees more, you know, productive? It sounds like, you know, maybe the latter, but what are your thoughts there? I mean, there's a lot of talk around people thinking they're gonna lose their jobs to ai. What are your thoughts there?
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:If you look at, I mean, if you want doomsday, you can find it all over the internet.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:True.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:you that it's the, you know, 75% of white collar jobs are gonna be gone in the next three to five years. That's a stat I heard just last week.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:I.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:I think it's possible. I think it depends on the nature of that job. We see it as another tool. You think about, did carpenters lose their job when nail guns? Available. No made. They
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Yeah,
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:a lot more work done.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:that's right. I love that analogy.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:you know, that's the way I'm seeing these tools. these tools are making it more realistic for us to deliver solutions to our clients. In a cost effective and efficient manner. When I say realistic, really what I'm saying there is, is for a long time,'cause custom software engineering requires a great deal of expertise. The resources are, highly compensated. these are highly compensated white collar jobs, the engineering roles. And, traditionally, you would not invest in a custom software solution unless you were solving a meaningful and expensive problem in your business. Well, now the bar is lowering a bit, there are a lot of things that I can speak to over the years, and I've been doing this for almost 30 years. red Hawk for 18, well, 17 and a half at this point. But there are a lot of really interesting projects that clients choose not to invest in because the investment is greater than the return.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Hmm.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:When now with these AI code assisting tools, the investment required is coming down and now your ROI is getting more and more in balance with the investment required to get there. So I think what we're really gonna experience is that we're gonna deliver more custom software solutions for the same mid-market clients, not less. And I don't think that our engineer's gonna be losing their jobs. I think they're gonna learn how to use a nail gun.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:love it. That's a great, great answer, man. and I agree with you. I agree with you a hundred percent. I just, we're gonna get better and we're just gonna get better. I mean, so, we're, we're on the back backside now. Back in the back half of this. But, I didn't, we didn't wanna talk much about this pre-show, but I know you're gonna crush this. what advice do you have for companies that may be listening that say, yeah, we're struggling with that digital transformation, or the last project we try to go to market with that failed because of some of the stuff you talked about. You know, what advice do you have for those companies and those C-level leaders that are trying to embrace digital transformation? They're trying to. Figure out where does AI fit in their ecosystem Any other tips or advice?
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:Other than calling Redhawk,
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Yeah.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:When you're going through, generally that comes back to a vendor selection process. Let's assume that they've tried and had moderate or little success, and now they're ready to try again because they believe in their vision and they're trying to move their business forward. oftentimes what that's gonna mean is selecting the right vendor. I would ask the vendors how they're using AI as part of their practice. I would ask them how they govern the use of AI
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:That's a good one.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:business. I think that's a really important thing. now companies need to start asking their vendors about what their AI policies are. think that's an important thing to take in consideration in how they're using AI to deliver value to their customers. That'll help build a little bit of confidence with the vendors that they're choosing, because I do think it comes down to choosing the right vendor.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Agree 100% and that's the business I'm in. Yeah, I love having those conversations and I feel like I got three jobs. I support my, selling partners, my, trusted advisors. my colleagues, and my suppliers. I try to help my suppliers be better.'cause sometimes you got blinders on, and it's your baby and you don't see your blind spots.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:Yeah.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:and that's, that, that's some great advice. so yeah, as we land the plane here, any other last words or anything you wanna leave us with? anything we haven't talked about that you want to hit on?
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:Last words, anything I wanna hit on? favorite books maybe, for those leaders out there who are really trying to figure out how to grow their businesses, a couple of books I've been reading lately have just been phenomenal. gap in the game.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Oh yeah.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:That's a great one to get a, it'll help you find positivity through the challenges and understand that, high achievers. one of the things that we tend to do we're always thinking about where we are in the moment compared to where we want to be. And the distance between those two points is the gap. And if all you're doing is living in the gap, man, that's a real bummer. But if you think about measuring your progress from the beginning of your journey. Maybe as a csuite leader within an organization or privately owned, you know, business owner, you gotta think about that meter being mostly full. If you really take the time to think about it, it's like, what about all the progress from when we started the business to where we are now? Now all of a sudden you've got a mostly full meter and this little gap that's at the end, it's just the next part of your journey, man.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:That's right.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:So
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:it.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:I read that book and I got a lot of joy from it and that's something I would recommend other leaders take a look at, especially those high achievers.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Yeah, that's a good one. I'll definitely, put a link in the show notes to that one.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:Cool.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:That's a good one, man. I, that kinda reminds me of, uh, from Good to Great. Another,
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:Good
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:Another good book that kinda has the same concept. that Gap, man, it, that you could get really hung up on that, you know, it also reminds me of another. Unrelated story for somebody that popped in my head is, you know, on our tombstones, not to go totally dark on us, but the tombstones, you got your birth year and your year of death, right? And it's that dash in the middle that really. Is what's important, you know, I mean, the beginning and the end. Those, those, you can't control this, but that dash, which, you know, call it the gap or whatever, you can control that. Well, Matt, thanks so much for your time today. I appreciate you sharing with us your thoughts on ai. And, development as a service, and of course, the mission that Redhawk is on, and giving us some good advice and a good book reference, referrals. So thank you for that, my friend.
matt-strippelhoff_1_07-29-2025_092220:Chris, this was a lot of fun. Thank you.
chris_1_07-29-2025_092220:You're very welcome. And there you go folks. Another episode of The Wireless Way. Please check out the website, the wireless way.net. Feel free to, gimme any feedback, suggestions, input, whatever. Love to hear from you. And as always, if, a customer came up, a friend, a colleague, share this episode with'em. I would really appreciate that and, be sure to, subscribe and follow. I appreciate that as well. And we'll see you next time on the wireless way.
