Starting a Company, Using AI, and Multi-day Trail Hiking with Adam Loewentheil

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick!

On today’s episode, we talk with Adam Loewentheil, Founder & CEO of Aldoa, about Starting a Company, Using AI, and Multi-day Trail Hiking.  Read his full bio below.

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Showtimes: 
0:20 - Fun Seal Facts
1:40 - Will AI take my job?
10:30 - Interview starts
25:44- AI in the field
40:30 - Embracing uncertainties 

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This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Adam Loewentheil at https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamjloew/

Guest Bio:
Adam Loewentheil is the founder & CEO of Aldoa, the first all-in-one software platform purpose-built for environmental professionals. Following in the footsteps of three generations of builders, Adam witnessed firsthand the inefficiencies afflicting the environmental consulting & engineering world. Prior to founding Aldoa, Adam was a financial analyst at a leading hedge fund in New York City. 

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Hello and welcome to EPR with the favorite environmental enthusiasts, Nick and Laura. On today's episode, Laura and I talk about how she uses AI. We interview Adam Loewentheil, the CEO of Aldoa about starting a company using AI in multi-day trail hiking. And finally, in honor of Sam's plush seal, harp seals, ring seals, and harbor seals are generally considered the cutest seal species. Leopard seals, however, are considered the scariest. Despite that, these murder tubes do sing underwater during the breeding season to attract mates. So I thought that was kind of delightful. Yes, and they're awful or scary, I should say, but also kind of cute. How about that? They do make a nice plushie. 

Hit that music. 

NAEP's 2025 annual conference and training symposium will occur on April 28th to May 1st in Charleston, South Carolina. Enthusiastic environmental professionals from across the country gather to share the opportunity to learn about new projects, share technical knowledge, network with other industry professionals, and engage with leaders in environmental technologies and practice. Learn more at www.AP.org. We'll be at that one too, right? Oh, for sure, yeah, there's another live segment right in the middle. I think it's on the 30th, so, uh, yeah, I hope to see you there.

Now let's get to our segment. 

No, I did have a kind of question um from Adam's interview. He talked about AI and I couldn't help but feel like 5, maybe 10 years from now, am I gonna be out of a job because of AI is gonna just be like, I'm gonna do all this in 2 seconds while. Someone else throws it all together to talk about that. Just to say like, it's not gonna happen, but. Well, you know, it's funny, at NAP last year, Fred, of all things said, we've had AI draft legal briefs and what would take a lawyer, you know, a week. They did in 10 minutes and It's pretty good. He's like, yeah, they're 90% of the way there. But I guess the way I would put it is, like I said in the interview, 90% of what you, or 50% of what you've written for Nipah is kind of already written, you know, most places where you're doing this has some documentation about what it is. So you already have a description of the area, you already have a description of the, uh, I guess affected environment, right? That's half of what you're writing, and then you're just interpreting and like the interpretation part is 

Always gonna be hard for computers in, you know, in my opinion anyway. There's always going to be levels of nuance and, you know, there's always gonna be need to be somebody that's checking what the computer says because a lot of it is messy, uh, or just flat out wrong. I would think 100% AI is going to be involved in the process. Yes, I need to know it and understand it. I met somebody last week who was like, I need to start, I take some classes in AI and I just immediately my brain went to, OK, cool, you're going to like start coding or build a chatbot. And he was like, I need to know how to talk to it. And I was like, Oh, I'm so far beyond there. I talk to it every day, you know, so I was like, Oh, you can take a class just to know how to like use it. You know, don't, you can just Google. Yeah, you just don't even have, you don't even have to talk back and forth to it. Like, you could just literally, like Google now actually has an AI box that pops up and you just are there, yeah, which is definitely wrong sometimes. And maybe we'll just finally like roles where things could be automated, maybe you'll just be like more of the leadership aspect and you're, you don't have to work 40 hours a week or whatever. You will find our 20 hour work weeks. That would be a dream. I don't see that happening though. I don't know why. No, that's that was the thing I think that Adam was alluding to was like, it just frees up time to do other things.

There's so much other stuff that needs to be done or you'll be able to take on more clients or more projects. Or whatever, you know, it just gives you more time back. I don't think that it would take away from like, you wouldn't have a job at all. And I think that I think you'll need to know how to use some different tools that utilize AI to make it work. I mean, think about it like in terms of like, when was the computer invented, right? When do we all get computers? The jobs didn't go away. Some of them shifted a little bit, but the computer is as revolutionary as the device can be a phone changing the iPhone in 2007. It is the most revolutionary thing in my lifetime, right, because computers were kind of invented before. I mean, we had them like growing up. I remember when we got our first computer when I was 5, right? That's kind of a big deal. The phone though, having it with you all the time is another leap forward and there's still jobs. So it's kind of always going to be like maybe some industries will shift a little bit, like how you do it will shift a little bit, right? Even how you use Word has changed over time, if you think about it, like, it's gotten a lot better at helping you fill out sentences sometimes, like or like if you're writing an email, and it's like, did you mean to say this? And you're like, yes. Instead of having to like finish the thing and then hit spell correct, it'll just correct automatically, right? Even that is a huge time saver that didn't used to exist. 

And so there's always stuff like that, so you can move on to the next thing. I would love it to streamline our biggest project. That'd be great. It would be great. But, you know, the feds are quite a ways away from accepting it. They're working on it, but not anytime soon. Yeah, like FEMA is. Oh, there definitely is, it is being, it's just. There's a lot of challenges and problems with it. Yeah. So, one day, one day for sure, I think it will. It is coming, it is something worth using, and I don't know, Laura, like how you use it. Is it like part of your day to day? You say you use it every day all the time, and we haven't really talked about that. I mean, you kind of mentioned it like, but some people look at me like I'm crazy, so I don't know how much I want. I mean, how do you use it? I mean, I'll tell you, I'll tell you if you're crazy. Well, it's, I use it for a lot of stuff. We did talk about this in the interview too, like, I use it for recipes. I use it for meal planning. I've used it for health checks, like, oh, I have this hangnail and it hurts. Like, what do I do? And it literally was like, oh, do this, this and this. And then, oh, it feels better now. Like, you know, things that like I could. Find on the internet would probably have to read like 4 blog articles or go on Reddit and read a bunch of stuff I don't want to see. It just gives you the actual information. Is it always right? Heck no. I have lots of arguments with it as well. But I also, I talked to it about, I feel like crap today. 

I worked through. This is, I think probably one of the things that's the most useful for me is using it to talk through anything that's in my way, like. I'm having a trouble with a client. What do I say? How do I approach this? I've gotten emails from people. I'm like, does this sound condescending? I think this sounds condescending and it will like tell me what it thinks, you know, and sometimes validate like, yeah, you're right. OK, cool. How do I reply to this without sounding like, you know, I want to murder you. Yeah, Per my previous email. And it's not always in the tone that I would say it, and it doesn't know my relationship with that person. So it doesn't always tell me the right thing. So I have to use my brain and say, no, I got to change this or whatever. But it is, it has been very helpful to me and just You know, I always say getting from point A to B faster in any circumstance. And someone asked me to meet them somewhere one time. They didn't give me like a location. They were like, Oh, meet me at this corner. And I was like, what's at that corner? So I just asked Chatty BT literally like, Hey, if I go to this corner, where can I hang out and wait? And it gave me the name of a coffee shop. I didn't have to go on Google Maps and search and look and look at reviews. It was like, Here, go here. It's good, good has good reviews. You should be able to hang out here. Oh wow. You know, that's cool. Yeah, so I think a lot of people are afraid of it and don't want to like start my friend, one of my friends is like, uh, like, it's like it's evil, it's evil thing, you know, and I'm like, well, I guess it could be, but so could a lot of other things that are out there. I'm using it for things that help me. It kind of reminds me of like, speaking of Google Maps, I know you and I remember MapQuest, right? You know I was going to say that, where you had to print off directions and then follow it to the T, and when you made a mistake, you had to circle back to where you were previously to see if you could figure out where, where you missed it. 

Oh yeah, and triptychs. My friend and I used to love going to AAA and getting a triptych. It was like a booklet that had the road and then on a long page and the road went down the middle and then it would go to the next page and go down the middle, so you just followed the road. Yeah, yeah page upon page, and it was so fun to go get. Yeah, and it was like, you know, my parents would have like maps and everything like that and like for the longest time, I mean like decade plus afterwards. Parents are still using the maps, still saying you need to have a map. You have to have a map, you have to, you have to know where you're going. Or when you ask them like, where are we going to meet up, they'll give you directions. They'll just give them to you verbally. And I'm like, I have lost you at step 2. There's no way I can follow this. Just give me the address and they won't want to do that. It's like, No, I got to tell you how to get there. That's what the phone is for, you know, so I'm worried, I always worry. I don't want to be that person because that's what AI feels like to me. It's like something I never needed before. I can be just fine without it, but I should learn it, and I should use it more. I've used it some, not nearly as much as you, but I know I need to get more with it. Yeah, I think mine knows too much about me. Some of the conversations make me laugh now, just because it's like, OK, well, my chat GPT. Yeah, based on your previews. Starting to understand me a little bit. And for people that are worried about that, remember it also, it's like that you have a phone, then the internet knows you. So exactly. It's all already out there, so I don't really worry about that too much either. I wouldn't give it anything that could be used against me. Like, what is there to give it that like, you know, it's going to turn around and blackmail me or something. Oh, you be careful. You never know where it's going to say I thank. But everything I've ever, my phone is probably listening to this conversation right now, so like yeah. Cool. Yeah, all right, well, let's get to our segment then.

For our interview. Dang it. Yeah, that. He tried. I did. I was so close. Hello and welcome back to EPR. Today we have Adam Loewenthal with us. Adam is the CEO and founder of Aldoa. Adam, thanks for joining us. Thank you very much for having me. I'm happy to be here. So you have a long and varied history in the industry and in other industries. Can you talk a little bit about where your family comes from, where you come from, and how you even made it into the environmental industry? Yeah, sure. I'll give you the, the brief intro, but I grew up in the suburbs of New York, so about an hour north of New York City, and went to school in Providence, Rhode Island undergrad and like you said, started my career somewhere totally different. I was working as a financial analyst in New York, you know, I moved to the Big Apple after graduating and was working at a hedge fund and I was there for about 3 or 4 years and decided I did not want stocks to be my life. I did not find fulfillment there. Uh, and, you know, just decided to leave without a job lined up, actually, just sort of a little dismayed by my work there, wanted to find something with a little bit more purpose and started to do a little bit of work with my family. I come from three generations of builders before me. So my Because he had 3 generations. My great grandfather was building materials company, my grandfather fought in his footsteps, and my dad is sort of working in the construction and real estate development world in the tri-state area on the east coast. So that was sort of my first foray into You know, more broadly the built world and also what led me into the world of environmental, of just, you know, I got staffed on a few sticky situation projects that, you know, required some pretty significant remediation in Brooklyn and in Manhattan and what started off as, you know, phase one environmental site assessments very quickly led down the rabbit hole of everything remediation. And Brownfield's redevelopment and walked away with sort of this thesis that this industry was underserved and neglected. 

I always use that word neglected and then I find that people I talk to don't take offense to it and they actually agree that it's neglected. Uh, but yeah, that's a very quick overview of who I am and how I ended up in this world in the first place. Very cool. So just kind of starting when you decided to quit. Right, how terrifying was that? Were you like, this has to happen, I need to do it, and then you did it and you're like, oh gosh, what's the plan? Or like, how did you kind of handle that transition from a very different career to the one you're in now? I think that if you've ever been in a a job that And I won't say I hated it. It just, I did not feel passionate about my work. It didn't drive me. It's not like I woke up one day and I was like, oh, I'm quitting. It's sort of a, a slower burn where obviously I was doing my work, showing up, but it's just this fact that I wasn't. Adding anything to the world, in my opinion, or making a real impact was a bit of a drain, probably over a 2 or 3 year period, honestly. So, yes, it was difficult, obviously, like, you know, financially, you are leaving a job that pays you a salary to go and not get paid and find something else, which is obviously always just a step into the unknown, but I do not have any regrets on that side of things. And I've always had this sort of itch to build something and be the, I don't know, cliche, the steward of my own destiny in some sense, work for myself and sort of motivate myself. And I find that that's one of the best ways to, again, just have some sort of passion behind you and not being told what to do and not find purpose in it, but actually do something because you want to do it. 

So, It was difficult, but I, looking backwards, I'm very happy I took the plunge. Yeah, so was that experience with the brownfields, was that you on your own working on something, or did the idea for the company come a little bit later than that? I would say there were 2 different endeavors that led to the idea of Aldoa. The first one was me being unemployed, convincing my cousin to try and find some really dilapidated buildings as like a side project to try and clean up and redevelop. And, again, we're talking really small scale. But I didn't have a lot of money, so it required a mortgage and working with a bank. And I was really new to that world and I walked in and I was like, OK, obviously we're going to need an appraisal, and I was working with two different lenders and the lenders were asking, OK, can you please get a phase one environmental site assessment as well. And that was really the first time I've ever even heard of. Anything environmental services focused beyond sort of emissions and what people think of from like a carbon perspective. Um, so dealing with more of the contamination world. So that piece of it was definitely one of the more, I don't know, impactful stories getting me into this. But then, like I mentioned, just working with my Family's business have been work with my dad and I've been surrounded by that real estate world since I was a kid, just because it's been in my family for so many generations. I never found myself being pulled to it, but from, uh, you know, my exposure to those brownfields projects, and I actually live in a brownfield in Brooklyn, New York right now. It's an old. Carpet manufacturer, it was really heavily contaminated and cleaned up and speaking to the consultants and engineers there was just, again, sort of like mind boggling of, hey, there's all these software companies that are building for these verticals across the board, right? You have Software for barbershops, you have software for laundromats, you have software for construction companies, restaurants. 

No one is doing this for environmental firms, no one is doing this for engineers and consultants. That seems a bit silly, given that the job is literally to protect the health of like those who inhabit our planet. That seems pretty important. So yeah, it just sort of came away as some shock and that got the wheels turning. Yeah dive into what is Aldoa and all of that. Can we take a step back for those people who are listening who may not know what Brownsfield even is? Yeah, so I'll give you the Aldoa and then the Brownfield side of things. So, Aldoa is the company that I started with my Co-founder Jake as well, who's the CTO. He's the technical guy here. I'm sort of the business guy or just coming with the idea. Aldoa is a software platform that is purpose-built for environmental consultants and engineers, right? So we Sort of started listening to the consultants and engineers through my family's business and just, you know, we, we started cold calling businesses, doing research, being like, hey, how do you write reports? How do you collect data in the field? How are you tracking your budgets and your financials and your resource management. So, that whole side of things really just took off when we started doing deep research and yeah, so this software company that we're building is again Sort of modern tooling that is purpose-built around the workflows of, of consultants and engineers. And to the second point of what brownfields, I mean, Brownfield's redevelopment. Is this process of sort of transforming these underutilized, dilapidated, usually contaminated properties in the US into usable spaces, right? So there are some tax credits associated with that. Local governments are able to incentivize the redevelopment of these properties because again, you're taking these Contaminated lands, contaminated properties that people have no intention of using and actually making it productive again. So, uh, really important work, and again, I don't think enough people know about this, even in the real estate world, I've, I've had conversations with developers who are like, oh, like, these can be actually profitable because we're getting, you know, funded partially by the government and productive to society like that seems like a win-win. Uh, so, it's definitely a good program that the state runs and the government. 

Yeah, for sure, so it is, it's really cool and I love that there is an avenue for that. So you're on the ground, you're doing that kind of work, and you're noticing what I'm gonna call our old school forms. And I know that there's been some stuff where, you know, we do have some more modern tech when it comes to like GIS software and stuff like that. So what were you seeing where you're like, OK, there's a gap and we can fill it. Yeah, and I would say that we were dealing with a whole different array of firms and sophistication, right? So there's the regional consultants and engineers who have, you know, 300, 500 employees. There's sort of the mom and pop regional shops that have 5 people who are really good in their county or their city. And across the board. We sort of walked away with a few different problem areas where we saw either, you know, the start of software being used, like there was like early innings and the seeds were being planted of like, hey, don't use pen and paper for this. But across the board, I guess the general trend was that people really relied on Microsoft Word and Excel, and those, that's the bread and butter, you know. Mhm. And yeah, I know. And look, don't get me wrong, like I come from a, you know, financial background, Excel is the holy grail there. It's just the work is really important. And when you're doing, you know, like the good example that we've been focused on building right now is sort of tools to collect data in the field and then using that data. Sort of aggregating in the office and then generating technical reports from it. But if you have someone using a field notebook, and you're sort of writing down notes, there's a bunch of problems with that. 

You have, we say doctors have bad handwriting, engineers also have bad handwriting. Uh, I also have bad handwriting, so I hope anyone doesn't take offense to that. Um. But then just the, you know, going back to the office, transcribing those notes by hand onto the computer, sending sort of photos that you took from the field or the site into a central database or a central shared folder. Project managers not knowing where to actually track down those files, it's just inefficiencies and these might only be Let's say, you know, we talk to engineers who are wasting, let's say, 30 minutes a day, right? That really adds up. And yeah, you just suck it up and you do the 30 minutes that day. But over the course of a month, right, where you have 20 working days, that's 10 hours of work of manually transcribing. Old notes that you could be using to grow the business or learn a hobby or do something outside of work, right? So, just, there's these little paper cuts that really add up and the workflow is specific enough in the industry, where the firms that were using software built for IT consultants or construction firms, yeah, it just doesn't work, you know, you can make it, you can make it work half the way, but it's not as good as someone building custom builds for your company. So what kind of forms and I guess what are you actually trying to pull through, cause I know uh like for example, I know there's some stuff on the Like if you're doing a species survey, there are programs that have, where you can put notes into the field and those can get uploaded back to a server.

 So is there, is that the kind of thing that you're doing? It sounds like it's broader than that, it's bigger than that, but can you give us an idea of like an example of like the kind of report you're generating, like a project and, and then those reports, how they get taken down, stuff like that. Absolutely. So we're, it's a funny sort of, you're walking the line between trying to build. like specific report functionality that is like purpose-built for this industry, as well as making it so that every firm has the ability to make it their own a little bit. And I know like that customization is really important. But, you know, I'll give a few examples of, we can go across the board. Anything from a phase one environmental site assessment of going to the field and collecting those sort of more generalized site photos. Notes, etc. Go into some more, you know, verticalized forms, so you have soil boring logs. We do some work with some geotechnical engineers who do a lot of compaction testing, um, or asphalt density reports, right? Or sort of the cylinder reports and concrete cylinders. So there are a lot of these different forms that, again, I just don't think have gotten attention because Software companies would rather be building things to help with services that are a little bit more, how do I say, ubiquitous, like a bigger market for them to go after, but this stuff is important and if you look at, I mean, I'm sure your listeners are environmental companies, geotechnical companies, there's a lot of them out there. It's not a small market. Right. Oh, for sure. And it's funny, um, there's also been quite a bit of change with the current administration. We talked about that a little bit. But even if you go back the past couple of administrations, the, the pendulum swings we're seeing, we see stuff changing all the time. Have you seen how firms are adapting to that? Is that one of the biggest challenges that you're seeing in the industry, or are you seeing other trends from the people that are on the ground? I think if you ask me that in 6 to 12 months, then we might have a little bit more data for you from the firms that we're talking to right now. 

I think that like sort of the end market business sentiment is actually pretty positive. I won't say that interest rates are like going down cause I'm not, I don't know, I can't tell the future and I don't think that's happening, but they're stable, right? And we've talked to, you know, our customers who are consultants, environmental engineers or mediation firms, geotechnical engineers, they're seeing a bit of a pickup from the end markets as it relates to development and oil and gas and sort of infrastructure. Maybe there's some sort of like buoying happening from like the infrastructure Act and some things that are sort of providing some incentive for demand in the market, but we haven't seen any huge changes yet. Obviously, you have things like PPOs that pop up and that sort of has a shift in everyone's focus of remediation and contamination, but I would say that's just another level of the jobs that they're already doing versus fundamentally shifting the workflow, if that makes any sense. No, it totally does, yeah, for sure. And it's good to hear, honestly, I think people need to hear it. Yeah. Yeah, I think there's a perspective from especially job seekers is that like the world is crumbling and all the jobs are going away and everything's changing, but really it's moving slower than that. And there's still a lot of work that's in progress that is going to remain in progress. So it is good to see from that end, especially since you are directly working with the companies, but another thing that has been in the works for a while is AI and it's any technical company, you can't ignore it. I don't know when you guys started, so has AI, did you know you were gonna have to deal with that? Is that something you had to add on? So, we started the company in 2021. So coming up in May, it'll be 4 years since we incorporated. Oh cool. I remember when we started the company, we had thoughts about AI and it was sort of, OK, let's deal with that in 5 years, and we had a lot to work on of just The basics before we did anything extra. And what I mean by that is like, just helping businesses track their budgets in real time and create proposals and sort of reduce that administrative burden and let them focus on billable hours. 

There's a lot to unpack there and a lot to innovate on before we get to AI. But that being said, over the past year, I think, There's been some pretty big advances in these like what I'll call like verticalized AI solutions where I'll give you an example. I talked to some customers who are trying to use chat GPT to uh sort of streamline NEPA and phase one environmental status. Assessments and they'll say, hey, here's my like database report, here's the property history, here's my Sanborn map. Can you generate a phase one environmental site assessment for me? And the responses from chat GBT are great. It's like, I do not have the expertise to do this. And that's cool, I mean, that's why I guess people want to get into this industry in the first place is because you have a degree and it's actually impactful and but these generalized AI tools that you and I are aware of from going on Google and playing around with stuff, they don't have enough data to sort of scrape on the web, because the work that a consultant and an engineer does is just a little To specific and verticalized. So we're really excited about AI because as we start helping these companies collect data in the fields and we can see, you know, what reports they're making out of that data, we can really train powerful models to take, you know, soil boring measurements and create that final soil boring log deliverable or that remediation document for their client. And again, we can talk about You know, we're not trying to get rid of scientific thinking. 

We are not trying to automate away the critical thought that goes into this, but have you ever spoken to a consultant who likes to format documents or likes to, you know, type up boilerplate descriptions of the property location every single time? I don't think so. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, well, your chap. It's different than mine because I don't, it doesn't matter what I ask it, it has an answer even if it's wrong. Yeah, it will just fake it. I know, I know. It does scare me, you know, like, how do I do this? It's like, here's the answer you're like, well, I know those four things are wrong. It's as simple as like, I can't get into my account for my bank. Can you find out how I'm supposed to get in? And they'll give me an answer and I'm like, the button you're telling me to push isn't there, you know, so to get that answer. It's scary and also as, as everyone's aware, and or at least environmental professionals, like you have liability doing this. You are signing your name on these documents and you're the certified environmental professional. You don't want to trust chat GBT for that. And I, like you're saying, Laura, like I've Googled, I'm not a very good cook, so I've been using chat GBD to help with recipes, and it tells me to put bad things in the microwave. And if I followed it, I would be destroying my apartment, so. Yeah, it's, but we are starting to see advances in that. And again, I think that training these more verticalized models, like you're seeing startups across the space build really, really smart AI models for very specific use cases, and we are excited to be one of the, you know, more specific use cases for this environmental world, but we'll see how that goes and develops. Yeah, I mean that's the thing, chat GBT doesn't have the knowledge, but you can create a version that has the knowledge and then build processes for people to fill in the gaps and do the reviews and make sure that they have ensured that what they're submitting is accurate and complete. So there's definitely, it almost feels like a space race for Nipa and AI programs to be built. 

Um, do you feel pressure from your clients to have something like that? I wouldn't say we feel pressure, but there's certainly an opportunity. And, you know, you touched on this earlier in the call of when we were talking about sort of a demand, you're like, well, I'm glad jobs. Speakers still have, you know, they shouldn't be scared. We're actually hearing from our customers that there's a bit of a supply crunch. Like they want to hire more skilled labor and they just can't find people to do it. And oh, that's so funny you said that because as a career coach, I see both sides of that and like talking to Nick and talking to my consultant friends, they're like, I can't find good people. And then I have a whole army of people like, I can't find a job. You're like, yeah. Something that you talk about a gap, someone needs to build something that bridges this because there's something happening here that is the jobs and the good people are not coming together. Yeah, but, OK, so that's a good business idea for us of having a, a bank of resumes of consultants and engineers. But like, if you look at, and again, this was sort of one of my VCs originally from looking at the industry too is, OK, so if there are supply constraints, right? Like if companies are struggling to hire, and we have, we have some customers who have said we would. Double the team overnight if we could in some regions, just because they have customers and clients who want work. If that is the case, and you can't hire someone, then AI becomes a really, really interesting prospect for these business owners who are hearing their friends and colleagues in other industries start to get access to it, because effectively, you can add some efficiency, right, to the whole. Team. So, every field tech is now your best field tech. Every report writer is now your best report writer. So we're not talking about sort of taking away a job, but it's just making people more efficient. And I think there's some fear around AI of like, you know, reducing the workforce. 

We don't see that being a, a problem, it's just making sort of, again, every field tech your best field tech. Yeah, and I guess it's from my perspective, it's one of those things where I would tell people like Nipa, like 50% of it's already written, period. Like it's just already written and that's why we talk about streamlining it, that's why we talk about how do we make this more efficient. It's been a conversation for NEA for 30, 40 years, maybe longer than that, since it came out. is how do we streamline this? How do we make it as efficient as possible. And you know, one of the things I would say is like if you're trying to write a document and you can spend more time thinking about the actual impact versus writing the affected environment, right? Like this is what's there. Like that impact is much more important to the overall project and that requires a lot more critical thinking, and that's always going to be the case. The other piece of that that we haven't touched on is just the, like the review process and the editing process and the back and forth both internally at a company and with clients and federal agencies. There's a lot of good, and I keep using the word workflow software, but sort of like, when we talk about, and we're in the process right now of building out report. Writing software, right? So it helps you with Nipa phase one's sort of guides you through that process in a much more efficient way than just using Microsoft Word, right? A big piece of that is the stuff you don't, it's not really associated with writing the report. Again, it's like knowing when to send this off to someone else to review and, like, identifying sections that have been finalized versus sections that are still underway. And that's sort of really boring part of the job. Again, we're not talking about scientific thinking. Let's just get rid of that boilerplate administrative side and allow you to focus on what's important, which is actually, you know, protecting our environment, protecting the inhabitants of our planet. Yeah. Yeah. My favorite use of it is to input something I've created and tell me what did I miss. 

So if you've got a report you wrote and you put it in there for like final review, oh, you forgot to use this. Oh, here's another cumulative impact you might not have considered like here are things that especially one that has a bank of things, a whole history to review and to be educated upon, you know, it could be like oh this happened in this state, this was here and like there's so much that could grow from that than just like getting a more efficient report. I would imagine that over the next 12 to 18 months, we're gonna see some really big advances because every vertical, such as environmental, is starting to get some better trained models. And again, it can start with some basic things and grow into being very impactful, but I'd say the time is now and business owners are probably asking for it because they need the help. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, can't wait to see where it goes, but let's move on to some different types of conversations. I know I do want to wrap up with a little bit more of the career side of things. I know when I was early in my career and I was building databases, improving processes, moving stuff from paper to macros in spreadsheets, and then taking those and building SQL databases and queries and all of this stuff. But I worked for the government, so I owned none of it. And it took me another 10 years before I realized how much of an entrepreneur I was. 

So I wish I had a podcast episode like this to listen to at that time I would have been like, oh, I could go do this myself, um, but for anyone listening who may find themselves in that position, right? You know that you are super smart, you want to work for yourself, you have an idea, but don't know where to take it, what to do with it. I mean, most of the people I'm career coaching with, they're like, I graduated, but I'm not qualified for anything like you're terrified, whereas you were like, I don't know any of this, I'm just gonna do it. Like, what advice do you have for people to just take that leap and do something. I would say that I am, so I'm a pretty shy person in general. Like, I'm a definitely an introvert. And one of the things that was very surprising to me when I started sort of diving into the unknown of a new world is how willing to help people were if you were trying to make their lives easier. And what I mean by that is just, and I think a lot of people getting into this field. Sort of have good intentions. There are different spaces to get into if you are trying to purely maximize dollars. And I think with sort of the newer generation, just seeing what's going on with, with the world and the environment is, uh, sort of incentivized to help. If you have good intentions, and Laura, like you said, if you're seeing these processes and you're like, Why is this happening this way? Like, there could be such a better way. Trust yourself is one advice I would give, like, do not, you have good intuition, trust it. And if you start to talk to people about why are you doing it this way, like, would this be helpful? Is this something that could change your life? You'd be surprised at how willing people are to talk. And I think that there's a lot of, you know, therapy is a big thing nowadays. People just want to be listened to. Uh, and if you can go in with unbiased ears and just sort of soak up as much information, there are millions of ideas that can improve people's lives. Yeah. 

And you notice he said introvert and then also started a company, you know, we talked a little bit about that because I think that sometimes people are like, oh well I can't do that because I'm shy or I'm quiet, but you also said you listen and you know, what, what's the stereotype? Introverts are great listeners, right? So you took your own skill set and decided to start a company using your skills. And Yeah, I would say that just on that piece, surround yourself with people who complement your skill set. I always joke with my friends from college, cause I'm, you know, 10 years out now, and it's my social circle has shrunk by a lot. But the sort of people who I've kept are just really high-quality individuals who I enjoy being with and spending my time with. And the same can be said professionally, right? So we've built out a team of engineers and everyone on our team just Really compliments one another. We have extroverts. We have people who are really deep in thought for hours before asking a question, and people who blurt out their thoughts, uh, any given second. And that sort of just mix mash of everything really creates productive work environments. So don't be scared to be an introvert, but it might be helpful for you to work with an extrovert, right? And complement each other and just be honest about where each other is sort of lacking and where you can help out. Yeah, I think complementary skill sets are really cool. It's a really neat thing, and I like you say, being honest, right? It's because And I think the older you get to, the more honest you can be with yourself, right? Because when you're really young, you're kind of going, well, you know, this is what I think I like instead of like when you get older, you're like, that's what I do like. 

And there's a very big difference between those two things. But that doesn't mean you can't start something when you're young or even that you're not young now, because I would say, yeah, still pretty young, that's great to start a company. So soon out of college, I would say. That's pretty cool. It's been a very challenging and rewarding experience. We have over 100 customers right now, so to be able to help more than 100 consulting engineering firms like, do their jobs more efficiently, more accurately, it's not just the business side of things. It's having a customer call you and be like, wow. And it's gonna be pretty mundane. things, but thank you so much for building this invoicing module because my end of month invoicing is so much easier now. Something as simple as that, it's like, OK, we helped someone make their life a little bit better. And that is a really powerful thing to hear. On the flip side, and I'd say my word of advice to Aspiring entrepreneurs in this space and other space is, you do have to embrace the uncertainty. And there were periods of this journey where I did a really bad job at that, and it's can like, you know, eat you alive a little bit and sort of make you question your decisions. And you just have to have this North star of doing something that you are passionate about that you think is helping people. And I think that that's really, really important. Yeah, that's fantastic. I love that. It's really good advice. It kind of dovetails into like one of the other fun things we love to do on the show, like the things that we enjoy, asking our guests about their experiences in the field. Um, it's a segment we call Field Notes, and, uh, it's like we ask our listeners to share stories about their own with like a hashtag field notes on socials, but I know you have a couple of stories, but let's start with Wind River Range, which is hard for me to say. Uh, in Wyoming, uh, 30 day backpacking trip. 

What was that like? Why did you decide to do it, first of all? Yeah, that was probably looking back the best month of my life, still to this day. And so I was, it was probably 12 years ago. I was 19 after my freshman year of college. I think I just wanted to like get away a little bit. And I joined a program called KOLs, which is the National Outdoor Leadership School, which, if anyone is listening, I highly Recommend checking out. And it's basically a program that takes you into the wilderness. So I flew out to Wyoming, the headquarters of Knowles was in Lander, Wyoming, and went into the Wind River Mountain Range, which is just this beautiful mountain range for a 30 day backpacking trip. And, you know, this was really my first foray into, I guess what I would call like, parts of the world that were untouched by humans, right? Uh. And it is really, really impactful, just being out there alone with your thoughts, alone with other people. No iPhones, no music, no distractions. You'd be very surprised where your mind can go, but also just like sort of physically challenging of being able to, you know, you're walking, hiking 10 miles a day, you're, you have A 70 pound backpack on, so you're sort of carrying all your food and tent and, you know, you have bear mace, uh, which is, yeah, like pepper spray for bears. Uh, but I do remember sort of that really igniting my appreciation for the world and I think, you know, what we do today is a little bit less sort of nature oriented as it is like industrial and construction, and we're dealing with contamination, and we do some work for with civil engineers and etc. But sort of preserving the world for what it is, is just a special thing. And that, that really got my mind moving. And I know there's been some scary legislation recently when it comes to national parks and things, and I'm keeping my eyes on that cause That is something that keeps me up at night. I know how important that is, and I would never want to take away the opportunity for a future generation to go out into the mountains, into the forest, and just sort of see the world for what it is without all the, uh, excuse my French, but all the BS that we've built up on top of it over the past 200 years. 

Yeah. Oh gosh. It's funny though. So, in a way, I feel like backpacking is kind of like a, an extended marathon, you know? Where no matter how long you do it, there's a point where you're like, why am I still doing this? I mean, there has to be. Was it, was it like day 10, you're like, no way, or is it day like 25, you're like, OK, I know I'm almost done, but I need to get out. Was there ever like an itch to be like, I gotta go back. So day 5, I remember the, the start of the trip was like, you know, you're going into the mountains, so it's some altitude gain. And day 5, I got a little queasy, a little sick. And I was like, why did I sign up for this? Like, I could be at home playing video games right now. Uh, I could be clear. Cliche and draw some parallels to entrepreneurship right now of, you know, questioning yourself and uh the jumping into the unknown. But yeah, you definitely get some of that. I think as I was more and more, so day 5 was some questioning, but day like 25, I was like, I don't really want to go back. Like, you sort of walk away, and again, this is maybe a little existential of me, but you do have this appreciation of everything that you were born into in the world and society and technology is fairly new in the grand scheme of things. And being able to just see mountains and trees and things that have been around for hundreds of Years is definitely humbling in that regard. So I would highly recommend everyone, you don't have to go to Wyoming, but get out there in some way, and it doesn't have to be 30 days. Do 2 days out, get a tent, learn best practices, leave no trace, uh, very important philosophy to live by, but definitely get out there. That's so fun. I, so I grew up on the Appalachian Trail, so it's always pretty important to me in general, but sometimes you see things that like stick with you and I remember being in Utah just looking at like these old rock formations, and you could just see layer on top of layer, and you could even see places where like the earth had shifted, you know, and instead of being vertical or, you know, horizontal, it's now vertical or slanted and you're like, oh wow, you can actually see where the earth moved and like the layering of it is so cool and it's just like you don't see that on a day to day basis, you know, it's hard to get out and do that, so, but 1000% worth it, totally agree. 

Yeah, and in in the Wind River, where I was backpacking in Wyoming, there's, you know, there's a glacier. And just thinking about, again, like how that glacier carved the geology that you are standing in right now, and the topography is like really an existential thought. So, yeah, just being able to see things that you wouldn't necessarily see in day to day life, people live in Cities, people live in towns. That is not how the world looks usually. But again, it's what the world is that we're dealing with today. And that's why it's honestly just bringing a bit of my like sort of appreciation for the environment into what I'm doing today. It's been maybe, maybe I'd say like 12 years ago, that trip sort of pre-defined where I was going in my life before I even knew it. Right, so did you do that trip and then go back to finance? Is that like were you were you in college or were you, were you working? I was in college for that, so it was my freshman year of college. I was still young and then went right back in back to school, and then I guess, yeah, you know, lost a little bit of that appreciation and now I'm finding my way back now. That's very cool. That's really neat. It's a really great story. I don't know, Laura, do you have any other career thought questions for Adam? Oh, I mean, career questions all day long, but, but we are running out of time, so. Oh yeah, yeah, gosh, I guess we are, yeah, OK. Yeah, I do. I mean, the backpacking trips I've done several. It's been a long time since I've done one, but they just, they give you perspective. 

Once you get that zoomed out look of how much time has gone by and will go by with and without you, and then, you know, how that there's the, I always think, you know, like, once humans are gone. Yeah, all the plants and everything, it will go on, you know, even if we've taken a lot of species with us, which I hope it stops, you know, we need to stop that, but, but it will carry on and that that inspires me a little bit as well, but I would love to do another trip and I would love to do a 30 day trip. That sounds really cool. Yeah, I'm glad I did that in school when I still had time to do it. I always imagine, could I take 30 days off right now? Uh, no chance, but one day. Yeah, I know, right? Yeah. I still live pretty close to the trail. It's just not, uh, I can go for a weekend, and that's pretty fun. And it's like amazing how quiet it is, you know, while also having, you know, different sound. So there's still a sound outside. It's not like earthly, you know, creepy quiet, it's just calmer is kind of the way I would describe it. Uh, it's kind of fun. You're like, oh yeah, there's no cars. I don't hear a single car. That's also kind of strange. No honking, no yelling. Yeah, it's definitely shifts your mentality. Uh, it's peaceful and it's, it's important to get out, like, I'm sure a lot of your listeners live in some major cities, so I don't know, San Francisco, LA, New York, whatever it may be. It's really hard. You can go to a park in New York, so I'm in Brooklyn, I can go to a park, but you still hear cars and honking and everything. It's just nice to get away from everything, but it's hard. Yeah, for sure, for sure. So, 

OK, we are officially running out of time, I know. But is there anything else you'd like to mention or talk about before we let you go? No, that was a super fun conversation. Thanks for having me. I guess if anyone wants to, you know, learn more about what we're doing here at Aldoa and sort of whether it comes to collecting data in the field, report writing, budget tracking, invoicing, you can reach out to me at Adam@aldoa.com or just go to our website, which is aldoa.com, and you can uh request some time to speak with us. Even if you just want to vent about your problems, we like to listen, so please reach out. Very cool. Thanks so much, Adam, for being here. Thank you very much for having me. And that's our show. Thank you, Adam, for joining us today. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review. See you, everybody. Bye.