Episode 107: Is AI Changing Business in St. Pete? | Kevin Claver & Drey Thomas
AI is moving fast.
It can already help business owners create content, save hours of work, and handle tasks that used to take a lot more time and effort.
That sounds great. But there’s another side to it.
What happens when AI gets good enough to do more of the work people are doing right now?
In Episode 107 of Talkin’ St. Pete, Ryan Bogden sits down with Kevin Clavier and Drey Thomas, co-founders of 1BB Owner’s Club, and the conversation goes from building a business with AI to jobs, fear, relationships, brain implants, and just how far technology could eventually go.
And for Kevin and Drey, there’s one part of business they don’t want technology to replace: the people.
Building a Business Can Get Lonely
Kevin knew what it was like to build a business and still feel like he was doing it alone.
You can have clients, employees, and people around you all day, but that doesn’t mean you have someone beside you who understands what it feels like to carry the pressure of running a business.
Kevin wanted a business partner.
Then he met Drey at a Bible study.
Drey came from the tech side, with experience in areas like cybersecurity, coding, and AI. When they later sat down for coffee, Kevin started seeing what Drey could actually build with AI.
Kevin kept throwing ideas at him.
Could we make it do this? What about this?
Drey kept saying yes.
Eventually, Kevin asked the bigger question: Would you want to start a business together?
And Drey was in.
That relationship became the start of 1BB Owner’s Club, where Kevin and Drey are bringing business owners together while also building AI tools to make some of the work behind running a business easier.
Kevin Was Tired of Content Feeling Like Another Job
Kevin had another problem that a lot of business owners can probably relate to.
He was tired of constantly having to create content.
It wasn’t because he had nothing to say. He was already talking to clients, coaching people, taking calls, joining meetings, doing podcasts, and having conversations every day.
The ideas were already there.
The frustrating part was having to sit down afterward and turn all of it into posts, emails, videos, and captions.
It started feeling like another job.
That became one of the problems Kevin and Drey wanted to solve.
They started building a tool that could take the things a business owner is already saying and turn them into content they can actually use.
A podcast could become social posts. A call could become an email. A conversation could give you ideas for videos or captions.
But Kevin didn’t want AI creating content that sounded like everyone else.
It still had to sound like him.
That’s where Drey’s side of the conversation becomes important. The more useful information AI has from your real conversations, calls, emails, and past content, the more it has to work with instead of starting from nothing.
For Kevin and Drey, the goal isn’t to have AI replace the business owner.
It’s to make more use of what they’re already doing.
If AI Gives Us More Time, What Do We Do With It?
Then Ryan brings the conversation to a much bigger question.
If AI can take hours of work off your plate, what are you going to do with those hours?
For Kevin, that time can go back into something technology can’t do for you.
Meet people. Have real conversations. Build relationships. Create experiences people actually remember.
That’s a big reason why 1BB Owner’s Club isn’t just an AI tool.
Kevin and Drey are also building a community where entrepreneurs can be around other people who understand what they’re going through.
Someone might have an idea that changes the way you look at your business. An introduction could open a door you didn’t know existed. Or sometimes you just need another business owner who understands why you’re stressed about something your friends and family might not fully get.
That feels especially relevant in St. Pete, where so much of the local business community grows through people actually knowing each other.
And as AI becomes a bigger part of business, that real connection might matter even more.
Kevin Clavier on Going All In
Kevin’s story also shows how much risk can come with deciding to build something for yourself.
Before 1BB Owner’s Club, he was building a fitness coaching business.
He quit bartending without another income coming in and spent around $12,000 on a coach while trying to make the business work.
His parents thought he was crazy.
But Kevin didn’t want to give himself an easy way out. For him, having something comfortable to fall back on made it easier not to fully commit.
So he went all in.
Years later, he made another big move by going all in on 1BB Owner’s Club with Drey Thomas.
Ryan, Kevin, and Drey also talk about fear and how easy it is to let it stop you before you ever find out what could have happened.
You don’t always stop being scared first.
Sometimes you make the move while you’re still scared.
How Far Could AI Actually Go?
By the end of the episode, they’re way past talking about content.
Ryan, Kevin, and Drey get into AI assistants, automation, jobs, our growing dependence on technology, and even brain-computer interfaces like Neuralink.
They also bring up the movie Upgrade, which takes the idea of a brain implant into a much darker science-fiction world.
Real brain-computer technology today is very different from what happens in that movie. But it leads to a pretty wild question:
How much technology would you actually be comfortable letting into your life?
AI is already doing things that would have sounded crazy to most people just a few years ago.
So where does it stop?
Nobody really knows.
That’s what makes this conversation with Kevin and Drey worth hearing. They’re building a business around AI and seeing what it can already do, but they’re also building 1BB Owner’s Club around something much more familiar: people helping other people.
Because even if AI keeps getting better at doing the work, we still have to decide what we want to do with the time it gives us.
And maybe the things that become more valuable are the things technology can’t give us.
People we trust. Real conversations. And having someone beside us while we build something.
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