Ep 167 - Microsoft to Mastering AI: Dave Hajdu on Leadership, EO, and the Future of Work

When I sold my last company, TinyPulse, which was around HR data, I sort of thinking about like what is it that's going to make people be better at their jobs because it turns out that's the number one driver of engagement. At the end of the day, to me, the only answer to that question is AI. You know, AI is going to change so much and I just sincerely believe that it's not going to take people's jobs in the near future, but people who use AI will take their jobs, right? And so that's kind of how this came along. And so now we do consulting and then we also have our online education platform, so two different companies, but it's going to be the same type of mission. Welcome to the EO business podcast. I'm your host, Lynn Petetti. This show is all about real conversations with entrepreneurs and members from the EO community, where we uncover the personal and business stories, lessons and breakthroughs that shape who they are today. Now in this episode, I'm joined by Dave Hachu, a visionary technologist, entrepreneur and global EO leader, with over 25 years of experience driving innovation. Dave has built and led multiple companies across the US and Asia from founding the outsourcing firm Vinosaurs to building and exiting tiny polls, a Silicon Valley back to startup and now leading edge AI and the AI Officer Institute. In this episode, Dave discusses the evolution of his businesses and his belief in the transformative power of AI. We explore the real world challenges of implementing AI inside organizations, the growing importance of having an AI officer and Dave's personal values and vision for empowering growth and belonging through technology and leadership. Let's join me in welcoming Dave. This episode is sponsored by outsourcing angel. Your partner for skilled offshore staff in LinkedIn marketing, lead generation, customer support and more. As a social enterprise, we donate 10% of profits to charity and provide heart-centered VAs who go the extra mile for your success. Visit outsourcingangel.com. Welcome to the show, David. Great to see you again. Thank you. It's great to be here. It's so good that we got to meet in person in Ho Chi Minh and you're actually the founder of the EO Vietnam founding member. This is such a privilege to meet you and before we talk about EO and all the amazing things that it has done for both of us. Let's talk a little bit about your journey and how you actually got started into the AI industry. Yeah, sure. My journey started over 20 plus years ago. I was at University of Washington and it was the first year they offered a major called Information Systems, which was half business, half computer science. That's literally defined my life. After that, I went to being a Seattle boy, went to work at Microsoft and a data group. When I didn't realize at the time, because we were moving mass amounts of data and money and that kind of thing. It felt like a boring job, but I realized that's really the foundation of everything I do now. Then along that journey, the App Store came out and so we built a lot of iOS, Android apps, that type of thing. Everything was data behind it. When I sold my last company, Tiny Pulse, which was around HR data, I started thinking about what is it that's going to make people be better at their jobs because it turns out that's the number one driver of engagement. AI is going to change so much and I just sincerely believe that it's not going to take people's jobs in the near future, but people who use AI will take their jobs. That's how this came along. Now we do consulting and then we also have the online education platform. Two different companies, but basically the same type of mission. Let me ask you, will you always a compute kind of guide? Because I know I hear a lot of stories like Bill Gates and even Jeff Bezos, I'm pretty sure. They always played around with technology since they were young. Was it always in your blood before you got into that kind of education? It's still not. It's still not in my mind. So actually came from a very different background. And one thing interesting about Microsoft was so Bill Gates was like your classic nerd. And he was very lucky, and I don't know if you ever read Malcolm Gladwell's book, "Health Liars," but what he talks about there, Gates, he was actually very lucky because he lived, parents were lawyers, he lived in Merce, Ryle, and in his high school was the first high school in the whole nation that got access to a mainframe computer. And so he was actually able to do that. And then he negotiated a deal for the time because it was super expensive. So he was like a nerd from the start. But what's really interesting about Microsoft is when he wanted to scale the company, he started hiring people like Steve Bommer, who was a basketball player. So he, you know, CEO, and then he hired Brian Valentine, who was a hockey player. They do his mean, you know, like he ran windows. And so he felt that like this need to have sports kind of personalities, you know, at that leadership level. And I honestly think that made Microsoft a weird place to be back then because you had very different cultures. I actually came from the sports background. So I spent my whole life basketball, football, baseball, as I got shorter, and everybody got taller. I decided to move to wrestling in tennis. And so, though that's kind of my main background, and then the education side, after I blew out my knee, I started teaching tennis. And so I realized that was some of the most fun times of my life, you know, kind of the other part of my background that I think is a little bit weird as I didn't have any money when I went back to college. So I quit and went back after I blew out my knee. And so I started working in nightclubs. And so I did a lot of work in kind of a nightclub and bar industry for seven years. So, so this is kind of like my, my mixed bag of life. But actually, you know, the the start really began because I like to make money. You know, I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur. And when I was a kid, my dad bought me a Commodore 64, it was one of the first personal computers. And so what I realized about it was I can actually like print out flyers under Don Matrix printer. And I can advertise my lawnmowing business. Someone I could put my tube Korean buddies to work for me, you know, and they would go out and mow the lawns. And so that was like 13 years old, you know, and so yeah. And so the computer part of it was always kind of like a means to make money or a means to point the means or, you know, so yeah. So I think that major was good for me because I originally started with computer science. But I think I would have been miserable if I had gone that route. Yeah. So you talk about you said you're eager to make money and be an entrepreneur. Like what was your perception of entrepreneurship? You know, did it leave out to your perception? No. You know, my perception was it was freedom, right? Like because it's a kid doing a lawnmowing business and then we watch cars, then we, you know, rake leads on the East Coast. Like it was free, you know, like I when I went back to when I got my first job at McDonald's, I realized this was like pain, you know, because I check in at a certain time and I leave at a certain time and I do what they tell me to do. And and so I thought it was freedom. But as I actually started running a real business, I realized something like you don't really own the business. It kind of owns you, you know, answer. And I think that's part of the reason why the divorce rate of entrepreneurs is so high, you know, it's like 70% right versus like 40 something percent around the world. That's probably why I never got married, you know, because I've always been just so like infatuated by it. But it's hard, you know, like I started a new business a year ago and I thought I was just going to do lifestyle business. And now we're scaling and I it's like now I just it's just yeah, it kind of owns you, but you got to sort of love that journey and love those risks and yeah, yeah. So no, nothing like I thought it would be when I was 13 and I thought I was just free money. Well, we always he's yet I think ignorant. Sometimes he's the bliss, right? We don't know what we don't know. Um, so, you know, what was it like growing that first business and selling it at all or moving on into the next one? Did you feel like you were able to shortcut? Uh, what was some challenges at the beginning of the first one versus the one now that you have? Yeah, so actually now is my third one. So my my my first one, um, that's my first eo qualified business was a services business called Venusaurus. And so we had a couple different iterations of that like we were doing sports software at the beginning and I my friend had a company called interactive sports media. I'm one of my best friends and we merged our company. So I was doing content management for small businesses. He was doing sports stuff. And so, um, we actually in that company did the ranking system for college tennis. Um, we ended up doing the first application for the US tennis association. So my background is tennis and my partner too. So, whoa, still there? Oh, no, it's frozen. Oh, got really quiet. If part is really badly. Oh, yeah, you're blurry. Okay. Yeah, so the first business was very services oriented. We service clients, mostly like data driven applications. Uh, that one actually ended pretty badly. So my, um, so for one, it was hard because we were very new. And so we had my my partner joined the accelerator program in the US. And then I was already out here. Um, it was hard because my partner really wanted to focus more on startups and kind of like taking a piece of companies and but there's not a lot of cash in that. And there's very, you know, and then me, I was kind of more on like, let's me money just the services side, you know, and so, you know, we had a bit of disagreement there. When we finally sort of got over the top, like I was getting pretty burned out about it. There was some other stuff too. Like he had some some health issues at the time. He's young too. But, yeah, and then eventually like we found a third person to come in and then I was going to exit. And then I just got really nasty. And so the whole thing was just a really bad enemy with one of my best friends. And so, so that's one of the lessons I learned is like, you know, kind of clarity of your vision and just being very clear about what your purpose is and being intentional. So my second business, I partnered with another EO member named David knew it's a good friend of mine. So he had these ideas around taking these like annual processes of engagement surveys and performance reviews and pulsing them. So, since I was coming out of the outsourcing company anyway, I knew had a build software. And so we built kind of this prototype and then eventually a tiny pulse was born. So that one was awesome because we raised nine and a half million toll. So, you know, I went to the venture capital route. David taught me a lot about kind of, you know, yeah, that was his second venture back business. And so kind of going through it. I mean, we had amazing, amazing board members. I mean, the Steve Anderson was the lead investor at Instagram. And so kind of like that level of quality of people like just phenomenal learning process. And so after we exited that, you know, so I got to go through that as well, which is a whole another thing due diligence and all that. So this time around, I think our problem we're trying to solve is pretty clear. It wasn't initially, but I was okay with that because I knew I was going to get to the clarity quick. It's so yeah. And ultimately, I'm just about trying to help people be better at their jobs, right? And so if we can do that, you know, then companies can be more successful. And so that's the training arm. And then we use consulting as a service to help us inform like, okay, well, how should we be trading these people? Like, who are these generation leaders? What are real projects like? And ultimately, they all come down to organizing data, you know, so I'm going to take what I learned to Microsoft from like, you know, better ways to run a company. And he also taught me so much too. So now I don't know. I just feel more relaxed about it, you know, like it's hard work, but at least like kind of the clarity of how we're going to get there is. I guess that's why they say people in their 40s do better at business than people in the 20s. Yes, hopefully we have a lot more wisdom. So you did mention early on that you intended for it to be a lifestyle business. You know, what is lifestyle meant for you then? And you know, why is it moving away from lifestyle now that you're talking about scaling so that we can kind of learn because it is easy to kind of fall into what we were trying to avoid, possibly, right? Yeah, so I think that like, yeah, so I so lifestyle to me would have been like in the beginning, if I say, you know what, I'm just going to be like a YouTube influencer with like a couple of staff and like teach people AI. So that, you know, you could easily create as a lifestyle business. The other way I could have done it was like, hey, I'm just going to do some projects when I want to do them and maybe have one or two people. That could have been a lifestyle business, you know, and so I didn't really imagine that I was going to, you know, have 30 people in my first year. I thought I might have three and I didn't really think I wanted to grow and really work a lot. I didn't care about anything to be big. You know, I thought if I have a hundred students, that might be enough. You know, but what I realized too though is there's just something exciting about impact and what about the impact you can make, you know, when people are learning AI and adopting it and getting better at it. I don't know, it's pretty, it's fun, you know, and I just, I realized that I love teaching more so than I love the consulting side of the business. So that one I still probably won't scale that day. I like keeping like five to 10 clients, but then the student base, if we get to a million, I'd be thrilled. Mmm, I getcha. So you were so focused more on the solving the problem, making an impact that the business kind of organically grow and that you're falling in love with the actual impact that it doesn't matter if it's scaling. How are you making sure that you don't fall into that kind of stress hustling kind of mode in entrepreneurship? Because I think when we think of lifestyle, we're also thinking about that kind of, you know, peace that going with the flow more and not kind of trying to get there fast. Two ways, don't raise money because if you raise, if you raised venture capital money, then you automatically put your foot on the gas and there's no stopping, right? And so, so even in tiny pulse, you know, we had skyrocketed and then we dropped evaluation around COVID time. And then it, but then it was like, we couldn't easily like downsize a business and made a lot of money cash, but we'd already got investors, you know, so then it was like, uh, we really want to try to pivot, you know, and try to really grow or maybe we try to sell, you know, so we employed an investment banker and went that route because you should lose the control. You know, there's no VC, the ones profit, right? Like, and so that's, you know, you've given away your destiny, right? Versus now, you know, I've got a couple of friends that put some money into one and the other and, you know, we're very aligned at what we want to do and be cash flow positive and I keep full control and and so that, that enables me to still kind of have the lifestyle that I want in control how far that goes, right? So I think that's important. Yeah. Now, talking about AI, it feels as if it just kind of came out of nowhere in the last couple of years, but you're in this space for a long time now, you know, what is your, I guess, insight into where the world has been and is going to go to and the need that you felt that you had to start this business so that you could help people around the AI area. Yeah. So, I mean, AI started in 1950, you know, probably about the same time as the internet actually, but when you think about AI, what it really needs is that kind of the convergence of three technologies. So you need to have the AI itself, you know, the neural network, the software, you need the hardware, right? Which is why a lot of people think Elon Musk and Groc is like a very interesting bet because they have a massive computer that's going to have a million processor one day. Then you need the robotics, right? Which is the other reason why a lot of people, like I put Tesla on a slide deck is like an AI company. Then my staff, why did you do that? They're not one of the AI, I'm like, yeah, they are. They're one of the biggest ones, right? They just haven't really commercial, they're just commercialized and Groc, but Tesla actually is a robot, right? It's a, it's a AI engine and it has a massive compute power bomb in it. And so, so the AI has been around for a long time, actually, and in different, different ways. And for us, we started using kind of machine, basic machine learning back in 2016. So with tiny pulse, we collected a lot of survey information. So if you don't get enough information, it's not valuable. If you have too much, it's really hard to go through it, right? So like, how could you classify things? But then you had to like tag your own data and train it and do all these things. Like, it was really expensive. So what you saw a couple years ago, generative AI was like, you don't need to do that anymore, right? Like now, they've already done that work for you. So generative AI was the big breakthrough that allowed just the common person to use it. And so, what was the problem you're seeing with businesses trying to implement AI? I mean, I know what it's like. I got so excited going to the AI workshop and you can't wait to to roll it out. But then you realize how hard it is. Like, who's going to be involved? How am I going to roll it out? And then the next AI tool comes around and then you're kind of like, it's it's too hard. So, you know, what problem did you observe and how are you solving it at the moment? Yeah. So I see two. And so the the first problem is data. You know, so ultimately AI has a whole lot of data behind it. So it's, you know, basically the average of all the information on the internet, that's why you can ask it to act like an eight year old and explain to you or act like a PhD. And it will do exactly that because it will just go take the data from the eight-year old stuff that it has. But if you don't ask it anything, if you don't prompt it the right way, then it's just flat. But even so, like, if you want to do, if you want to do like employee engagement data. So let's just take, you know, so we have a regional initiative called the transformational growth pulse. So we want to measure whether or not we're achieving our purpose to enable transformational growth in the lives of our member. Great. So I ask a simple pulse survey and I get a feedback. Right? So now what do I do with that feedback? Well, it's in type form. So somebody in the old days would take it out. They would try to organize it and then they would try to go and say, okay, from this, I want to figure out all the positive and all the negative. Then what happens? Well, the positive can become a testimonial and the negative can become feedback that needs to go into different systems, right? So if you think about that, just that little process right there, you need to number one, collect the data. Then you've got to organize the data and then you've got to send the right data. So hey, AI, these are all the positive things. I want you to go create testimonials. These are the negative things which is so you might have another AI agent that actually figures that out and checks it just to make sure it's really clear. So it's a little system you've got to build, right? And so for most companies, you know, the EO, for example, their surveys, nothing is automated past the collection of the survey. That's right. And so they haven't systemized it. So they don't do it effectively. So to do that, those still you've got to organize the data. You've got to plan a process. You've got to like tap in some APIs together. It's not a time to work, but it's work. So that's I think number one, people haven't systemized their usage of AI. They're just ad hoc doing it. And then number two is there's no leadership to do it. So in your company, even in my own company, I don't have an AI officer that's dedicated to my own company, right? So we're projects for people, my buddy Wang has a, has a huge business. They're like they're doing AI apps. They don't have a single AI person focusing on their company. So they don't use AI and marketing. They don't use it in HR. They just don't, you know, and so I believe my hypothesis is every company at some point three to five years from now will have their own AI officer that can manage the programs, right? They will know, oh, this is how I systemize. This is how I organize. So that's the two reasons I think programs are failing. And if you think about like if you were to run a Spanish program in your company, but you don't have somebody champion. Yeah, what would happen? So yeah, so that's quite a mild relief. Yeah. And I guess it just comes down to us thinking that it's just this side thing, this little part time thing that we're dabbling in, but the moment we shift to go and this is the way and the the the future and the only way to stay competitive or succeed, then we will pull it in vest fully into an AI officer. And is that where you got the name from AI officer because you really do believe that someone every company needs an AI officer. Yeah, so so the way that name came about is that CIO was started to become like a trendy thing for like McKinsey and IBM to talk about. So and you know, and somebody put an article out that said, hey, you know, every company will have a CIO within five years or to whatever the number was. Well, most of us don't have C level execs in any role in our company, but you just don't, right, like the majority of the companies of the world are small businesses. So what we do have or we have managers, right, you do certain things. And so I thought, well, and the domain was available. So I said, what when I start to coin this phrase, the AI officer, right, like, which is the the person who can manage the AI programs within one office. And then I also try to simplify like, how are we going to really become more efficient. And so when I thought about tiny pulse like our journey, you raise line and a half million, what happens? Grow faster, get managers, get fat, go slow, you know, next thing, you know, you crawl to a hall and you're you're have bloat and waste. And so the model that we created is around kind of four offices, which is revenue, talent, operations and innovation. And I think it's single AI person in one of those areas can just learn a lot because I'll understand how revenue flows through a business. And then they can apply AI at basically tie that, you know, be the glue that holds it all together, that connective tissue. So that's kind of how I look at it. I think it's just kind of like project managers for AI. Yeah, there is a lot to learn. I mean, I'm already thinking, okay, that person knows AI, did they then, is that officer the one teaching? Why are they the one just executing everything? I guess what are some key key points that you would say their role is for a business? Yeah, I think the fundamental change in mental model is a lot of people when they think tech, they think techies, right? So like, you know, they think, oh, I'm an IT program. I need a CTO, I need a IT, I don't think so. I think the AI officers come from the business side. So I think that the best AI officer will know kind of the business of revenue. So maybe they know marketing and then they can actually expand their knowledge to understand how marketing connects to brand, how that connects to sales, how it connects to customer success. So to me, that learning curve isn't as hard either, either anyway that you came from and then how do you actually apply AI into those functions? Right. And so I think give it more of a decision maker that can like look at this and say, huh, I'm repeating this more than three times in the marketing department. We can probably automate, you know, like, oh, marketing, they meet a little bit more training on how to prompt. Okay, we can probably arrange that, you know, whether they do the training or not. Oh, okay. Well, actually sales, if they recorded the call and had it analyzed and had the playbook stored here, we probably got a hired engineer to do a little bit of that work to get everything organized together. And then there you go. Right. So that's kind of how I look at people, like here's a big opportunity for people to become what I call a creative generalist, right? So I'm a generalist in revenue and on creative enough and I understand AI so that it doesn't matter with the situation, teach me five frameworks for doing taglines. Great. Okay. Now show me the prompts to do it. Okay. Great. Now let me help the marketing person create the tagline for our business, right? That's the way I kind of see them executing in life. Yeah, really great tips. Do you have any tips around, I guess, you know, sometimes you have all these new ways and yes, you can automate. But then your team, as it gets bigger, if they start to become a little bit more like, oh my god, like, not again, another change. I just want to keep doing this because there's too many changes. Yeah, any observations and tips around that. Yeah. So we think that's one of the biggest risks in anything with tech, you know, where you have like kind of change fatigue, right? It's it's hard. You have like organizations are not agile enough. You know, there's fatigue that comes with all the changes. They're not usually like holistically thought through and they're also like technologies that may or may not be around, right? So if I if I change to say use a hub spot as a CRM system, wow, man, now there's pipe drive and that's lighter and but ultimately that CRM system, you know, it's like, but I think AI is fundamentally very different and I don't think it's it's not going anywhere for one. It's going to displace a lot of things because it shouldn't never, you know, like, I can be a funny story. My chapter manager for EO Vietnam, she's Vietnamese, you know, English is her second language. And so for years, it was always like she might draw something I correct it and then we post that that was always it. And then I step back into the learning chair two years ago before I came area director. And so I'm working with her and I had introduced her to chat CBT as soon as it came out. We taught her how to use it and then I'm like, oh, here's my upcoming event. And I said something to her and she's like, oh, hey, I modified it. And this is a little bit punchier. I'm like, what are you saying to me? You know, like the way she decided it was literally as a marketing professional that corrected my work. And this was why I did it because she taught herself it. She asked chat you could either do it and she had a better version of the event than I did. You know, so that's the potential, right? Yeah, totally. I love it. Yeah, I know firsthand, because I personally was not a good writer, but with Jati Pizzi's help, I've just built a lot of confidence in, you know, working with it. So thank God. Now it's all a little bit about EO Vietnam. And you're a founding member. You've been in living in Vietnam, but you're not from Vietnam originally. Tell me a little bit about that. Yeah, I've got weird roots. So I'm actually having theopian, or my mom passed away when I was 19. So same, same year that I blew out my knee. And then my father ironically remarried Vietnamese lady. And so that was kind of like, and then my doubles partner was Vietnamese. And so I had these interesting Vietnamese connections, although zero attention to moving, because I'm also a military kid. And so the war was like, you know, like a big thing. And so I thought they hated Americans, right? And so, you know, with all that said, I end up getting a Vietnamese customer, he owns some Vietnamese far restaurants in Seattle. And he was just like super tech forward. And he's like, hey, man, you know, like they just opened up a venture capital fund. It's the first one in Vietnam. And they just joined the WTO. And you should come. And so that was kind of it. And then my first company, I didn't raise money. And so I was like, yeah, you know, come out there. And he's like, hey, why don't you hire some people in my office. And then you can come like every three months. And you can help me out what I'm doing. And so that's kind of how I got out here. And then one year later, him and his wife ended up getting divorced. So they were going to close the office down. And so I'm like, hey, you know what? I think I'll take it, you know, and so was, yeah, so that was kind of what got me to go from like just coming here every quarter to actually moving out here. And when I did like, I just kind of immediately fell in love with like the entrepreneurial nature, you know, like pretty much every house. Since they don't use the garage for a car, they set up a business. They sell it. They wash motorbikes, you know, they sell electronics or bootlay DVDs or whatever it was, you know. And so I mean, any girl I've ever dated here didn't aspire to be like an executive. They aspired to own a company, you know. And so that to me was like very attractive about the country. And then next thing, you know, I just I stayed and so my first like, let's say about eight years here. I didn't really know how many people had a really small circle of friends. And that was good. And then I ended up joining. So all my Seattle friends became like why EO, they've been eventually changed EO. And then my partner, I'm like, hey, why don't you join accelerator? You know, so, so he did it, but you know, I'm here. So I didn't. And it was really good for us. And then I met a few people from Seattle who ended up kind of taking a leap of faith in us and doing business with us and you know, all through accelerator program. And so that was seen and all that. And then next thing, you know, we were qualified, but there was no chapter. Well, yeah. So then I was like, okay, well, what about Singapore? Now that's expensive. You know, what about Thailand? Now they don't speaking with yet in that chapter. And so I was kind of looking around the region and I didn't even look at Malaysia at the time. Like I just, you know, in the such a good chapter, so I ended up joining the Philippines and flying once a month, you know, to go there. And yeah, so that was that until the Philippines became the sister chapter to try to start Vietnam. And you know, you know, how EO is, right? They're like, hey, can you help? I mean, yeah, yeah, sure. I help. Next to you, let champion. I don't know anybody but in here. This is the problem, right? Yeah, so it really was a kind of a ground zero because my only friends here were executive expats, you know, or like Dicque expats. And so I knew that community, but none of them could join EO, right? And so they were all YPO already or something. So yeah, so that's kind of how it started. And then, I don't know, just kind of one person at a time, like I ended up sponsoring a coding school that opened up here. And that founder co-founder had another business and he became the first member. And there you go, man, with the next, you know, two years later, took us two years to get it started. But eventually. So how long has EO Vietnam been established? So I would say about 10 years ago, we started hit and then probably eight years ago, we formed it. And so what is it about EO that's making you not just become a member and participate, but really giving back and want to set up a chapter and doing so much for it. I would love to hear your experience in EO. Yeah, I think like, so I mean, all you know, people will tell you that it's about the relationships, you know, so once you kind of start getting relationships in EO, you start realizing your other relationships are different, you know? And so like I will enjoy that. And especially if I EO Vietnam right now is awesome, you know, like pretty much most of my friends that I spend time with are EO Vietnam, you know, we're a small chapter. So I think that's one, I think the dirty secret nobody talks about that I think is a shame, is it it's totally fine to make money in EO, you know, we're have no solicitation policy, which I love. And so it's very natural, you know, we talk about what I do, it's about what they do, you know, my buddy, I've been friends with them for seven years, you know, you know, he has zero intention of using tiny poles or anything else. But now with AI, like, okay, great, we can help you with your branding refresh or we're doing business together. EO has been amazing for me to do business as well, you know, it made a lot of money because of EO. And I'm not shy about it. I encourage all the new members. I'm like, look, just be authentic and be yourself and never solicit anybody. And they're going to come to you, right? And so I think that's, you know, awesome. And then the third thing, you know, that obviously every other member says, too, is learning. I mean, the opportunities for learning have been phenomenal from universities to, you know, different workshops to GLA. But I think that to me, the most important thing I'm I learning was joining the board and then joining the regional council because you're solving these problems that are kind of hard in their hard, like, people are hard to work with sometimes because not everybody, so you learn to lead a different way. And that's been great too, you know, so I really just those three things I really enjoy it. Yeah, I love it. And how do you make time for it? People always say, number one, I don't even have time to join EO in the first place. But second, how do I have time to be on the board? How do, you know, how do you people like us and clean myself make time for EO? I mean, for me, like, I have no wife and no kids. And so that's like that it had more time anyway. And I enjoy it. But I think that it's more, you know, to me, life is just priority. It's kind of what, so if you find value, you prioritize it and you do it. And then if you need to have a business and make money, and you need a way to help you make more money, whether it's through the learning or the relationships or literally the people you do business with, EO is a great way. If you believe that, you make time with it, you need to be taught for it, believe that you have to learn and grow to make more money and be better in business, you probably do it. You know, if you believe that I need to be a better person to take care of my family and my friends, then EO is a great medium to do that too, right? And so I think it's like, then it's just, hey, if you have eight hours dedicated in the day, maybe most days ain't used to work. Some days only four is to work and four is to EO because that contributes to it, right? So that's that's kind of how I look at it with people and make sure pie chart of your time, you know, and about part. Yes. If you want to look back at yourself as a new young entrepreneur back then, what was leadership style like? And what is it like now, especially after you've been through EO, run multiple businesses? How would you describe yourself now? I guess young, I was overconfident, like I always felt like I was, I was a pretty good student and I was felt like, you know, my father's to PhD level student. And so I had really good training when I was young and like, so I was felt pretty confident. I also, and I still have the same problem, I'm too complicated, like I just feel like I overcomplicate things and I do too many things and I need to narrow myself in. But so the younger me said yes to everything, the older me says no to almost everything. And so it's just one of those things I just have to, you know, block it out. And the younger me always try to please people, the older me, like I just try to please my values. And then some people fit in, some people don't. And I'm okay with that too, right? Where the old days that was really, really hard for me. I think I guess the final thing is related with staff. In the old days, like I give a lot of chances and I hired people kind of quick because I believed in it. You know, I almost never fired anybody because I was felt like they could grow. Now I'm the exact opposite. So, you know, we take a little bit more time hiring. And when I say that we hire really fast, like our days to hire is about 13, you know, we use AI, we meet decisions quick, but we always run two month provisions because there's just nothing like working with somebody. And if in those two lights, it doesn't work, we pull the trigger like that. Like there's no hesitate. And because it not only drags down me personally, it drags down them because they're not going to enhance their career in somewhere that are not a fit. And then it drags down everybody else with a company. And so, yeah, I always say those are kind of three things that I've cheered a lot since I was young. Yeah, sounds great. And since you seem like you've been reflecting and you're kind of really asking yourself, what do you value and what do you want out of life and kind of everything else is no. You know, what are you doing by what is your value? What is your purpose now that you're at a later age, later stage in light in business now? Yeah. So in EO again, you know, I went to, so I went to GLA and with Warren Rustan, this was seven or eight years ago. Oh, it's a lot. Keep around 20, 18, 20, and 10. So, I did that and, you know, he talked about clarity of vision and then certainly even 10 and power of values. At that time, I had no vision. I had no values. I had no nothing. So I go back and then I'm like, no personal anyway, like we were already getting into where we were doing it for business, but not for personal. So I went back and I talked to the learning chair. I'm like, dude, we got to get someone to do personal vision. And so we got this guy named Frank, um, Shannon was last name, but he was a member from you know, Shanghai. And he, uh, he was like a drug addict, you know, all these like, you know, personal, he was younger and he kind of got through them and, and he was like the most intense coach I ever had. And so in this thing, we only had 10, 10 people that attended the session. He did one on ones with each of us prior to and then by the end, we actually had a personal vision. And so I created mine, which was to empower growth and belonging and it stuck with me ever since, you know, and I realized that probably being only child and being lonely and all that, belonging is very important to me. Might be longing for the right people and then growth, you know, I love growth whether it's sports or business or anything. So that stuck with me for a long time. And then you know, like, um, personal values and company values, like, you know, company has changed a little bit, you know, values, you know, so I just have a little journal while I keep kind of my three sets. But to me, um, Bill Gates had a value called intellectual horsepower that I put in every single one of my companies and was always about just trying to be smarter. And then for the first time this year, I changed it to leverage intelligence because now I think it's just very different. It's not so much about me just getting really smart. It's about me, like instantly, it's kind of the matrix, you know, like, I love you. And then you leverage intelligence to teach you and then use it to execute. And so, so you know, so that's to need probably mine. Most important value, maybe even kind of the one I honestly, your transparency and some of those. But yeah, I think that that that really drives me right now where I try to help people grow, help people belong and that help people like leverage intelligence to be better. Yeah. Yeah. No wonder why you're so aligned with EO values because it's all about worth. It's all about the longing. So yeah, I can see why. Um, we love this organization. So this leads me to my last question with everything that you're doing and with the values that you're living, what do you want to leave the world with? Or do you want the world to remember you for? That's a good question. I, I, I hope the world remembers because I probably won't have kids at this point. Um, so I hope the world remembers me just that I've helped a lot of people be better. Now, like I think that in be better, give me different things to them. But I really do believe that kind of this new powerful technology AI is something that can help people better in anything they want to do. Whether it's like plastic, you know, if you're a meal prepper, like crafting your meals to like, you know, taking pictures and counting your calories to like systemizing your office, you know, like I just think that it's such a powerful thing that will really help and hopefully I've played my part. Thank you so much, Dave. I definitely feel like my life is better. My knowledge is more, does I? And I'm actually working with you on a project and we're using luck as a new tool that newer head up. So you definitely have already shown that ability to teach and help others. So thank you so much, Dave, for the opportunity to speak with you today. And I'll make sure to add all your details in the description of the YouTube video so people can connect with you. Okay, awesome. Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye. Okay, bye bye. [Music]