The future of business is driven by artificial intelligence, tech

Heather Graves

Staff

September 16, 2024

HOLMEN – Rod Holum – CEO and founder of Coulee Tech – said helping grow and guide the tech knowledge of younger generations, in turn, “improves the tech IQ of everyone in the community.”

“I am very passionate about the AI revolution, in general,” he said. “I don’t think there will be a profession in the next year or two that isn’t heavily dependent on AI. In the next five years, I expect 90% or more of jobs will be drastically impacted by AI. Businesses need to know how to use it because it’s dominating and changing the world.”

Holum said Coulee Tech works with several small- to medium-sized companies that don’t have large IT departments.

“A lot of times, they are leveraging the knowledge of their younger employees,” he said. “So, the more we can equip those young people on how to do basic functions helps out those businesses.”

Holum said that is the very reason he, and the 15 employees at Coulee Tech, work with organizations throughout the community to not only talk about IT, AI and cybersecurity, but also mentor the next generation of tech professionals.

“In the future, those are the employees I will be looking at hiring,” he said. “That is the world they will live in – a highly tech-oriented one, especially with artificial intelligence (AI).”

On the cusp

The introduction, advancement and interaction with AI, Holum said, is moving at a much faster speed than the internet did when it was first introduced.

“If you go back to the ’90s, business leaders remember a world before the internet,” he said. “Some of us were in middle school or high school. We saw the internet start to take over in the early ’90s and by the late ’90s, everyone was using the internet.”

Over the span of a decade, Holum said the internet drastically changed the world – and “there were both goods and bads that came out of that.”

“With AI, it’s happening quicker than what we saw with the internet,” he said. “When ChatGPT came out in November 2022, it was the first application to get 100 million users in 30 days. That is tremendous growth.”

As new AI models are released, Holum said hundreds of millions of people gain access to new capabilities nearly instantly.

“It is going to drastically impact people way faster than the internet did,” he said.

From a safety perspective, Holum said it isn’t a vote on whether people think it’s “good or great or helpful – it just is.”

“It’s the reality that everyone’s working with, and we need to learn how to use it,” he said.

Holum said the best way to find out the dangers, “are to be knowledgeable of those dangers and capabilities.”

“AI, coding, software development and cybersecurity normally aren’t things that folks talk about around the dinner table,” he said. “Most of the time, the only time people hear about it is when there is a big cybersecurity breach.”

Unfortunately, Holum said, some of these technologies are being used against others – specifically the elderly population.

This reality, he said, has led to discussions with the Wisconsin Department of Health and Human Services to help protect vulnerable populations.

“There are hackers out there doing voice simulations and tricking the elderly into giving them money,” he said. “Or you have phishing attacks where a hacker will take someone’s voice from an online video platform – like Facebook or YouTube – and create a fake call to parents from their kids and say ‘hey, I’m just going to jail, and I need $5,000 or they are going to put me in the general population.’ And parents will go ahead and wire $5,000 before later finding out it wasn’t their kid at all.”

Without a knowledge of what AI is capable of doing, Holum said people don’t even think the person calling them isn’t their actual family member.

“So, for me, it’s very important to show people what AI can do – so then they will know both the dangers and benefits of it,” he said.

Holum said Coulee Tech has also works with local chambers by providing informational sessions for businesses regarding the dangers and benefits of AI.

It’s his connection with the chamber, he said, that first connected him to the local Boys and Girls Club.

That introduction, Holum said, led to him working with the club to share his AI knowledge with middle school students.

“The students caught on quickly to software development with AI assistance,” he said.

Holum said when working with students, he doesn’t spend much time discussing the future of technology – “because to them, the future is next week.”

“So I utilize free AI they can use right now – because many of them already are,” he said.

Regarding the Boys and Girls Club, specifically, Holum said he worked with 10 middle school students – “many of them liked playing video games” – and showed them how to build video games with the help of AI.

“We showed them how to set up a computer so they could make and run a simple game, and then showed them a few prompts that allowed AI to do the software development for them.”

One of the middle school girls, Holum said – who didn’t have access to a computer at home – created five different games from scratch in the two-hour session.

“I was really impressed with what the students were able to do,” he said. “I think it’s important for young people to have that tech mindset.”

Coulee Tech team members, Holum said, have also worked with area high schools and Junior Achievement of Wisconsin Northwest Area to talk with students about IT and cyber security career opportunities.

“It’s great talking with students and hearing about their excitement in the industry,” he said.

Giving back

As a company, Holum said Coulee Tech has a 10-10-10 policy.

“We pay all of our employees 10% above market rate, we give 10% profit sharing back to team members every December and we donate 10% of all sales to community members,” he said. “Typically, those dollars go to nonprofit organizations, but if there are any causes that team members are specifically involved in (we will donate to those causes as well). It helps team members feel like the company cares about them, and they get to contribute to organizations they themselves are involved in.”

When asked why the Coulee Tech team takes the time to give back to the community, Holum said, “nobody has ever asked me that question.”

“I don’t have a reason – I just know it’s important,” he said. “It’s just what we do.”

More on Coulee Tech

Holum said Coulee Tech – which was founded in 2008 – provides IT support, cybersecurity and AI evangelism.

“We have a live-person guarantee – 100% of our calls are answered by a live person or we provide a $100 apology if a call goes to voicemail and isn’t followed up on in 59 minutes or less,” he said.

In 2023, Coulee Tech invested in a new corporate headquarters (1805 Granary St., Suite 15) for its growing operation – which Holum said is equipped with state-of-the-art heat pumps and solar that produce more green electricity every year than the company consumes.

He said Coulee Tech has grown by 30% year over year and has received recognition as one of the fastest-growing companies on the Inc. 5000 list.

“We missed the top 500 by three spots,” he said. “Coulee Tech was No. 503,” he said.

For more on Coulee Tech, visit coulee.tech.