Great Interviews and Amazing Advice – e56 – Q3 All Stars pt1 – David Vs Goliath

Speaker 1:

Coming up today on David vs Goliath.

Slater Victoroff:

Truffles are amazing and people get shot over truffles.

Pete Tillack:

The problem is if you don’t take that move, you’re going to become laziness. And procrastination is the enemy of time and discipline if you’re going to go for all the marbles.

Tom Dusenberry:

I really realize that the closer I could get the product, the more important it would be because in the game industry, it’s all about the fun and all about the product.

Julie Laughton:

You can tell and all my clients, just so you know, know that they were trained by me because everyone’s like me.

Adam Degraide:

I’m wearing a circle. Ironman sucks.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to today’s episode of David vs Goliath. A podcast dedicated to helping small businesses leverage technology to not only help them compete against their large competitors, but win. Your host is currently the CEO of Anthem Business Software, a free time Inc. 500 recipient and a serial entrepreneur with a passion to help small businesses everywhere find, serve, and keep more customers profitably. Please join me in welcoming your host, Adam Degraide.

Adam Degraide:

Hey everyone, it’s Adam Degraide with the hurricane edition of the David vs Goliath podcast. Today, we’re going to be looking at the all stars of quarter three here on David vs Goliath podcast. Today’s episode is brought to us by automatemysocial.com. If you’re a small business and you’re a service based business, you can automate 100% of your social media among all your channels and never have to think about it again. That’s true, by the way. Nobody needs to manage it, think about it, run it. It’s going to run itself. It’s an amazing product. If you do offer specials and incentives, then you can automate about 90% of it.

Either way, if you’re a small business, you got to go check it out, automatemysocial.com. Also, visit us online at davidvsgoliathpodcast.com. They can subscribe to receive our newsletters and apply to be on the podcast. We look forward to getting your application. Many of the guests you’re going to hear from today on the All Star episode have done exactly that. Well, we’re going to start off right now with Slater Victoroff. I want to make sure I’m getting that right. Slater Victoroff. I am. Artificial intelligence was the subject, this was several weeks back. It’s a great discussion. Plus if you like mushrooms, he likes mushrooms. Let’s go for it. Let’s hear it from Victor.

Everyone always throws the word around AI, “AI this, AI that.” There was a movie made AI, and I think there’s a lot of not only misconceptions and misinformation in regards to AI, but I think a lot of people don’t even understand conceptually what it is. So why don’t you tell a little bit about that and then we’ll go from there and talk about your business?

Slater Victoroff:

And I think the first thing I’ll say at the highest level, is AI is such a broad space. Frankly, I was just talking about this, I just posted this on Twitter. There’s so much cool research coming out in this space. And even me, someone who is full-time just trying to keep up with everything that’s happening, not even across the entire field, even in my… It’s a significant segment, but it’s not 100% of everything happening by any means. So that’s maybe the first thing, is it means a huge number of things to a huge number of people.

And it’s a broad enough term, AI, that it’s kind of hard for me to say like, “Yes, that counts. No, that doesn’t.” In the strictest form, one of the things that’s really interesting about AI has a definition that shifts naturally over time. So very, very vaguely, AI is the act of using computers for anything that computers are not traditionally used for at that time. So back 50 years ago, the buttons in an elevator, that was AI. Or your rice cooker knowing when to turn off, that was AI. But because now that’s assumed, that’s not AI anymore. And so it is something that does intrinsically drift over time, which makes it confusing.

Adam Degraide:

And so one of the questions we have here, is what do you do to relax basically? Do you collect anything? And you said, “I forage…” I think forage is the word.

Slater Victoroff:

Forage. Yeah.

Adam Degraide:

Forage for mushrooms.

Slater Victoroff:

I forage for mushrooms.

Adam Degraide:

I watched that movie and I saw the relationship that Nicholas Cage had with his truffle pig. And it was such an interesting movie, because you don’t realize that’s a real thing, that people forage for mushrooms. I take them for granted. I love mushrooms. I make mushroom omelettes in the morning and I like mushrooms on my burger. And if I have a chicken dish with mushrooms on it, I’m psyched. So I didn’t realize that it was something you could do to relax. Tell us a little bit about that. That’s fascinating.

Slater Victoroff:

Well, so let’s start here. When you’re talking about mushrooms, I’m guessing you’re talking primarily about white button mushrooms. The Agaricus [inaudible 00:05:01]-

Adam Degraide:

Or truffle.

Slater Victoroff:

Okay, sure. Yeah. Truffles are amazing. And I will say, truffles are at one really extreme end of the spectrum. Like, people get shot over truffles. I’m not trying to mess with that.

Adam Degraide:

The pig was-

Slater Victoroff:

Okay. Yeah.

Adam Degraide:

It’s a master truffle pig and the pig stolen from them.

Slater Victoroff:

Oh, I see. Yeah.

Adam Degraide:

Liam Neeson’s movie where one of his kids is stolen.

Slater Victoroff:

Yeah, yeah. But with a truffle pig.

Adam Degraide:

But it was an actual pig. Yeah.

Slater Victoroff:

Oh, damn. Yeah. Okay, so here’s the thing that was amazing to me, and I think I got into mushroom foraging in a completely accidental way. I think it’s one of the interesting things where it ended up being perfectly aligned with the pandemic. I was out in Northern New Hampshire… Or no, I guess central New Hampshire with my friend, rock climbing. And it was an amazing, amazing year. There was so much rain and so there were just mushrooms everywhere. And I knew the barest, small little amount of mushrooms. So my cousin was a PhD in mushroom science and I was like, “Oh, that’s kind of cool.” I didn’t really think much about it. Because growing up in the US, I didn’t realize this, but we have a very microphobic kind of mentality where like, “Mushrooms are going to kill me.” Those are terrifying, right?

Adam Degraide:

[inaudible 00:06:22] mushrooms.

Slater Victoroff:

Right? Yeah, no, my cousin showed up and literally she shows up with a mushroom and I’m like, “That’s going to kill me.” That’s my first reaction. And she was a PhD. Very smart. So we ate it. And that’s amazing. Not only is that the most delicious mushroom I’ve ever had, and this was a hen-of-the-woods, but I’ve never seen anything like that. I didn’t even know mushrooms could look like that. And so that was kind of the first taste. But then what happens, I was up in New Hampshire this amazing summer and we found literally 10 pounds of hen-of-the-wood mushrooms just growing out of the base of this oak tree. And it was like the luckiest we ever could have got because the thing is, nothing else looks like that. This is one of the most delicious mushrooms you can find out there.

Adam Degraide:

You said, just for the viewer-

Slater Victoroff:

Hen-of-the-woods. Grifola frondosa.

Adam Degraide:

I wanted to, before we continue, so hen-of-the-woods. Right now, my producer is putting up for the watchers, a picture of what these things look like. So you’re looking at them right now. We’re not able to see them, Slater because this is going to come in the editing later. But he, right now, just showed people what hen-of-the-woods is. I’ve never had it. So what-

Slater Victoroff:

Probably not.

Adam Degraide:

What is the difference in their shape, their color, their texture?

Slater Victoroff:

And if we’re going to bring up some images afterwards, I think the best example I can give here is a lion’s mane mushroom or a bear’s head tooth. The thing is, the mushrooms that you’ve been exposed to, even if you’re talking about everything you’ve ever seen at a supermarket, it’s such a limited portion of the whole mushroom kingdom or the fungus kingdom. Think about it like vegetables. It’s like a whole kingdom of vegetables. Fungi, it is a kingdom. It is that large. It’s got that kind of diversity to it. But you’ve only ever seen lettuce and broccoli, that’s the equivalent I think, of folks with their mushroom experience. So the taste is completely different. There are spicy mushrooms out there, there’s smokey mushrooms out there, there are really meaty mushrooms out there, there’s sour mushrooms out there.

There’s a mushroom out there, shrimp russula… Sorry, crab brittlegill. Actually, sorry. It is also called a shrimp russula, but very confusingly, it’s a crab mushroom. Shrimp of the woods is a totally separate thing but literally, it has the taste and consistency of shrimp. It smells fishy. And that was the most amazing thing. My mother lived up in Northern California, which is one of the most amazing places that you can possibly look for mushrooms. And you just go into the forest and you find once you start looking for them, they’re just everywhere. And imagine that you could walk into the woods and pick up on the floor, a top grade Wagyu steak. That’s the analogy I give people. And the secret is, just like it was there. It was possible the whole time and you never knew about it, because people are still kind of afraid about it.

Adam Degraide:

Slater, thank you so much for joining us on the David vs Goliath podcast. It was awesome. I had a lot of fun with you. While this is a guest that’s close to my heart, I actually found out about this individual because I bought a piece of his art. And this is a great episode with Pete Tillack. If you are a creative or you love creatives and you want to support their businesses, what an amazing episode. This was episode 47. Let’s hear from Pete. Let’s get right to it.

I learned about Pete because my wife and I were strolling through a gallery in Napa, California, just having a great time. And this piece just struck me. I’m going to put it up right now on my iPad, but my actual producer’s going to put the real one up so people can see a higher quality. This is the picture right here. I walked in and one of the things about my wife and I, Pete, that I think you’ll appreciate, is we love art number one. We’re creatives ourselves. And at the end of the day, when we see something we like, we have to have it. And when I saw that picture entitled For All the Marbles, the thing that appealed to me was obviously the character of the lion. But what was really intriguing was the messaging behind it. And it was basically like if you want all the marbles, you can’t just sit on the couch and let time burn. You got to get out and work. And I thought that was just so awesome.

And as I started to look at some of your other pieces of art, I was really inspired. And so just so everyone understands, I’m a paying customer of Pete. Pete did not give me a piece of art to be on my show. I met Pete because I bought his art and I believe in what he’s doing. And I begged him to come on the David vs Goliath podcast because one of the things I love here at the David vs Goliath podcast, Pete, is we have businesses of all shapes and sizes. And so for the watches and the listeners, your journey, I was reading on the info form is fantastic. I don’t want to spoil your thunder. Tell them a little bit about how Pete ended up where he is right now in that studio and where your journey began and how you got to where you are today.

Pete Tillack:

That’s not a short story. That’s a long story, mate. My life has been a conversation in itself and it’s a good conversation. Started off not knowing, again, when you’re a teenager, you don’t know what you want to be. And in Australia, the life as an artist wasn’t really a viable choice. I didn’t know anybody who was, I didn’t know anyone who really collected art. So I never even thought anything about… There’s a creative streak in my family when I look back, but nobody did anything with it. And so I became the rudimentary electrician and did really well, loved it. Did my four year course and was about to open up a business. I was working two jobs at the time to create a big nest egg to create a business. So a nightclub at night and I was working seven days a week as an electrician.

At 23, I thought I’d just go for a quick surf before I started the business. And in Australia, we go for a month or so for a quick surf. So yeah, it’s a different lifestyle now I see, it’s great. But I ended up doing France, Spain, Portugal, and I just kept going. I hadn’t planned on it, so what I had on me was what I had on me. There was a lot of hurdles. Home sickness is a real thing. It’s the lack of security and friends and family. I got over that. And once I got over that, my life opened up to so many adventures. I ended up filling three passports, would work where I needed to work when I needed to work.

Really didn’t have any plans. One of my favorite stories, it sounds funny because it sounds like I’m saying somebody else’s story, but it was my life. I remember getting in touch with a mate from Australia, who I knew was somewhere in the world. He ended up being in Canada, told me to meet him in California. That’s how I ended up creating [inaudible 00:13:35]. He found me. And then we went through Mexico, we decided to surf through Mexico. And as we’re driving through Mexico, he said, “Hey, you want to go to Costa Rica?” I’m like, “Yeah.” He’s like, “You know where it is?” “No.” I quickly figured out where it was, and this was prior cell phones and everything.

Adam Degraide:

What I love about your story so far, is that you know man, life is an adventure, right? And you just let your heart carry you and your free spirit and your love for adventure. And man, I think people admire that. There’s a lot of people in their lives that are like that lion, right? They’re sitting on the couch and they’re staring out the window, and they’re wondering why all the marbles that they could have are spilled out on the floor. And the whole time, is you just got to get off and get out and get going.

I do want to talk about some of the art that you actually do because I love the style, I think it’s amazing. As a matter of fact, my producer right now is showing the watchers and listeners some of the pieces that you sent to us. So guys, just look at this stuff. It’s amazing. Now, Pete, you and I can’t see it right now because I’m not able to display it at the same time, but our watchers and our viewers are seeing your artwork. And when I walked in and I saw it, I was blown away. And I have the list of all the pieces that you sent here to me. I would love for you to pick one and let’s talk about that particular piece a little bit about either A, what inspired you or B, you do a lot of commission work as well, too. So let’s first start with a piece that you created because you wanted to. What would that piece be called?

Pete Tillack:

Well, let’s talk about the one that you have. All the Marbles. I paint a lot of the pieces or all the pieces that aren’t commissions come to me via a conversation like we’re having right now along with deep thought. And sometimes, I’m on a track and then sort of veer off and I’ll have to make notes saying, “Hey, this could be a new piece, or this could do a new subject matter that I wanted to visit.” My thoughts about life in all my travels… Well, let me jump back. I used to paint coastal scenes because that’s all I knew. It was my calming of who my personality was now that I look back on it. And it wasn’t until about seven, eight years ago where I had trouble supporting my family I have a wife and daughter. And through a long show that I do that’s a live show, high on coffee, high on stress, but not giving up came this vision.

And it started off as a self portrait because when I was in my sister’s place in Canada, I put a couch on the track in the field and took photos of it with me on it. And that was before I was even an artist or the painting artist. And I decided at this point in time, I’d been looking for my voice and I started painting this piece just out of frustration, completely off the cuff from what I was painting. And as I’m overly thinking it, stressed out, the story started to come. It was my self portrait. But I ended up taking me out and realizing there was a lot of symbolism in it and I can go further into that symbolism, but we’re going to go back to All the Marbles. And so now, I look at why we do things and then I look at symbolism and bring them together into a piece.

So for All the Marbles, it’s the lion sitting on the couch, looking out the window and he’s contemplating. He has a very strong look to him, but he’s in contemplation. Now, it’s funny that we put these feelings towards animals, the wild don’t have the personal traits that we hope we have. They don’t look at us in those matters. They look at us like a piece of meat. So he’s sitting there and he’s contemplating things. If you look, he’s got the goggles on his head.

So you can sit back and you can contemplate where you want to go in life. Because if you look, there’s all papers flying around. Not every napkin sketch can make its way into fruition. But sometimes, you’re going to have to take that adventurous leap knowing you’re going to lose the art of momentum if you don’t move. And that adventurous leap will help you fill in the gaps of the things you don’t know. Now, as you look forward out that window and you start making those moves, the problem is if you don’t take that move, you’re going to become laziness. And procrastination is the enemy of time and discipline if you’re going to go for all the marbles.

Adam Degraide:

Pete, thank you so much for spending time with us on the David vs Goliath podcast. Well, it’s time to take our first break from our corporate sponsor, Automate My Social. We’ll be right back.

Speaker 8:

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Adam Degraide:

And we’re back on the David vs Goliath podcast. This was exciting. Episode 48 was with a gentleman named Tom Dusenberry, who’s responsible by the way, for one of the most successful acquisitions in commercial history like gaming history, commercial history, any history. It’s amazing. He used to be the former CEO of Hasbro Interactive. This is an awesome episode. Let’s hear from Tom right now.

You and I have never talked before. This is the first time we’ve ever spoken. When I was reading your sheet, it was reading almost like my own life story in a lot of ways. I’m a huge gamer. I’ve been playing games since Commodore 64 came out. My brother used to program video games. I’d come home from school and he’d be like, “Hey, check out this video game.” I’m a huge gamer right now. I play a game called Apex Legends, which is by a company as you know, EA, a division called Respawn that they have. I play it every day. I’ve played it every day for the last three years. So much so, Tom, that I actually just recorded a rock album with seven songs and the entire album is dedicated to the characters of the game. And I just released it. It’s called the Adam Music Project. And the fans are going nuts.

Because to your point, if you do something fun and you enjoy it, people will do it over and over again. And you’ve seen now, over the years, gaming has taken on a whole new life. You have Comic Con where you can go and people dress up like the characters of their favorite game. They immersed themselves with fan art, which is what I just did. I call it the Ultimate Fan Art Project, where I’ve immersed myself so much into this that it was so much fun that it became a big part of my life. Drives my wife crazy, but I can’t help myself. It keeps me young, Tom. I’m in these first person shooters with young kids trying to survive, and it’s a lot of fun. But you did say something fascinating too, and I don’t want it to be lost. You mentioned that you started out at Parker Brothers in the delivery center, is that correct?

Tom Dusenberry:

Right.

Adam Degraide:

And then 20, 30 years later or whatever it was, you became the CEO and that truly is a David vs Goliath story. Tell the listeners a little bit about that journey. So you didn’t just go from doing that to the CEO. What was that progression like, briefly?

Tom Dusenberry:

Yeah, it really is an amazing story because when I was growing up, I didn’t know it but I’m just dyslexic. And so for me to be marginalized all the time where even in my family, if my sister and my brother got an A, they would get $5. If I could get a C, I’d get $10. And it was just during the time nobody really knew what dyslexia was and what the circumstance was. So when I got out of high school, all my buddies went to college and I was like, “What am I going to do?” And I got this job at Parker Brother Games. And it was amazing because what I found, was that there was more to life than just being able to do proper English and that type of stuff. And what they really cared about was hard work ethic and what they cared about was new ways to do things. And that really fit in well with me.

And it was an amazing journey, Adam, from a point of view that here I was, this lost kid, and the first thing that happened to me was that the government put in this thing called OSHA and it was a safety type of a thing for employees and factories. And nobody knew what it was, but our factory had a lot of problems. People were getting their fingers cut off, there were back injuries. And I started and I took that as an opportunity and really focused on that, and that differentiated me from the other people. And all of a sudden, the people on the East Coast, which was where the headquarters was, realized that there was some talent that was in Iowa and I was able to transfer myself from Iowa to the East Coast. And that was the big change for me, because now I was in corporate life.

And what I found, was that I really realized that the closer I could get the product, the more important it would be because in the game industry, it’s all about the fun and all about the product. So I went through this journey where I was like a material planner, I was a purchaser and then I had a break and an opportunity to switch to sales. And in sales, I did both sales promotion, but then I did alternate sales and that’s when Atari came along. And nobody really knew how to sell Atari. So I found this small account called Toys R Us and they were just a real regional account. And all of a sudden, they took off because video games took off and I was right there with them. And so sales was a great area for me. And then I had an opportunity to transfer into marketing, where I did primarily marketing support.

So whether it was advertising, international, promotion, ad licensing, I was responsible for all of that. And so when you look back, all of a sudden, I was really skilled in being able to build the product, I was really skilled in being able to sell the product, I was really skilled in being able to market the product. And then I switched over to the best part of all, and I became the head of inventor relations for Parker Brother Games. And alls it was, was creativity and innovation. And it was an amazing ride. During the five year period I was there, in the last three years, we had eight and nine and nine of the top 10 games came out at Parker Brothers. And that, of course, was what Hasbro saw, Alan Hassenfeld specifically, and he invited me to join him on a journey of innovation. And I came back and I said, “The future is all about the internet and the future is all about interactivity.” And that created Hasbro Interactive and put me on the journey of video-

Speaker 1:

And that’s what you became the CEO of, right? [inaudible 00:26:27]

Tom Dusenberry:

CEO of Hasbro Interactive. Correct.

I was reinventing myself all the time and having to reinvent myself internally to people. And I felt that one thing that I did that I think that others didn’t pay attention to, was that whenever there was an acquisition or a change in management, that meant that there was a new opportunity to reinvent yourself. So a lot of times, when I was switching from marketing to sales, it was because there was a new company taking over and all of a sudden, there was a new leader that I wanted to be supportive of. But I felt that that was really critical.

But I also think that you need to have an end goal. And that is for me, once I realized that I was pretty good at this stuff, the thing that I really wanted to focus on was innovation and leadership. And for me, I felt that was the top guide. Because if I could run the engine, meaning getting really good games into the company and then lead a group of people that were 10 times smarter than me, the result could be pretty exciting. And so that’s what it was all about, was really to focus on what you’re really good at and try to get yourself into the position where you can take advantage of what you’re really good at. And so for me, once I got to innovation and leadership, it kind of was what I’ve done the rest of my career.

Adam Degraide:

Tom, it was awesome being with you. I’m so glad Tom’s actually helping me right now with my game. It’s going to be coming out over the next several months and maybe a year from now in the states, but it’s pretty exciting. Well, after that, we had episode 49 with Julie Laughton. She was a hoot, an absolute hoot from Southern California out in the Laguna Newport Beach area, which is one of the places in my life, that I like to spend the most amount of time as possible without living there, mind you. Taxes are terrible, politics are horrible. That’s just my opinion. But anyway, I am so grateful to have interviewed Julie. Let’s hear from her right now.

Julie Laughton:

Okay, I’ll tell you exactly. So I’m like [inaudible 00:28:36] architect and I like to draw on design. So to this day, it all starts with the good plan. But my very, very first jobs in New York and my internships were architects and they send me in the field because I was the only girl in the office. So instead of the guys, they just laugh and they send me to do all the dirty work, which is me measuring the 100,000 square foot spaces with the plans, getting the plans right, standing in the dirt, getting whistled at by all the Italian and Irish workers. It was brutal. It was union, you can’t even go anywhere in the construction. But they love me, because I’m this girl in the ’80s with high heels and a skirt. So I’m in there making things happen, working with the top developers, making them change their building design so the furniture works.

It was like I was thrown in by my boss at 24 years old and they said to me, “Julie, you’ve made it in New York. So if you do it here, you can make it anywhere.” But what happened, is because I was thrown in young because my boss wasn’t a designer, she needed me to work with them. So I ran this whole team of men and a draftsman and all these guys that would help me do the furniture. So what happened, is I moved to California because there was a recession in New York. So I moved to California and I was so proud of my career, but I couldn’t find a job because I was overqualified at my age and it freaked me out. So I was forced to get a job in an arena I was not comfortable [inaudible 00:29:59].

So I got a job selling kitchens on Robinson Boulevard in Beverly Hills. And that led to me selling and designing $1 million of cabinets and kitchens custom and in everybody’s home everywhere. And I got noticed and that drug me to Newport in Laguna. And then all of a sudden, a few years later, I become the contractor because I can’t stand on working in residential without the structure of commercial because I’m used to very professional. Because that’s what I learned in New York City, no nonsense. All my business skills came from Manhattan from the best. So when I was forced out of the nest, the protective nest of getting a job with an architect, or getting a job with another developer, I had to start my own business to survive. And it was survival. You have to-

Adam Degraide:

What year was that, that you started your own business? You realized, “Okay, I’m doing great at selling sinks and designing them.”

Julie Laughton:

1991.

Adam Degraide:

1991. So in 1991, think about this, watchers and listeners, she started her own business because she really needed to find a place for herself and she loved what she was doing. And she said, “There’s no place for me to go because I’m overqualified at my age. I’m going to start my own.” And in 1991 all the way to today in 2022, here we are, you have a very successful business. How many homes, since you started your company, have you custom designed and remodeled?

Julie Laughton:

The total is more than 1,000, even though I only say 500. But if you start from ’91 and all those homes I was in LA and Palos Verdes in Malibu, oh my god, I was everywhere. That’s 1,000 plus homes of me hand drawing and drafting and working with the homeowner. So it’s a lot. It’s like a doctor who’s delivered 2,000 babies.

Adam Degraide:

That’s so funny man. I tell people this all the time, when I build software and we install our clients on them, it’s like a delivery. It’s like you are, you’re giving birth to a vision and something that has life behind it. And people who live in their homes, they spend most of their lives there. And so to be able to create an environment for them, that’s fantastic. It’s awesome.

I talk about the five smooth stones that every business needs to have. And the first one is people, then you have the right process, the right tools, there’s also the right plan. It actually starts with plans and goals. The right people, the right technology, the right process, and then courage. With your team, when you hired them, what kind of culture… How important was it for you that you made sure you got the right team members to match your, “We’re going to get this done, we’re going to be professional, we’re going to get it done quick, efficiently, and on-time”? What did you do to find those people and then how did you train them in what I like to call, the Julie Laughton way, so to speak?

Julie Laughton:

Well, you can tell and all my clients, just so you know, know that they were trained by me because everyone’s like me. So they’re like me because it’s plans, process, procedure, execution. So the thing is, I have a secret system where if they can make it through the first hour of conversation with me, we’re good. Meaning, we have to match. And I can tell that it’s… First of all, people are number one. That’s it in life. Number one. Relationships, it’s number one. You can’t have someone you work with that you don’t get along with or they don’t follow and they’re not in sync with you, no matter what you’re doing, hiring or whatever. So I have a process where I interview them and I see if they like me and they understand that I’m super high energy, super efficient, super fast.

I do not like to repeat myself. But on the other hand, I’m an educator, I’m a trainer, I’m a leader and I’m ridiculously patient because I’ve literally groomed my people to serve the client five star. And that’s what we’re about. It’s about the client and the experience and the trust. So when you see my men, they’re dressed clean, their shirts are clean, they’re polite, they’re courteous, the job site’s like nobody else’s job site. And then our efficiency on response and email time and the way we handle the client is how I do it. So the thing is, they have to be in sync with me almost immediately. And I can tell by their personality because a lot of them, my people have come to me and then they never leave of course. And then they refer me to people that are like them. So it’s kind of fun. There is an art to it and I think it comes naturally to me.

Adam Degraide:

Julie, thank you so much for joining us. It was an awesome interview. Right now, here’s another special message from another amazing sponsor on a David vs Goliath podcast.

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Adam Degraide:

We’re back with Iron Man Sucks! Episode 50 with Ahmed Elsamadisi. I can’t believe I said that again, I think I even pronounced it properly. I had a blast with this and we learned why his Ironman is better than the real Ironman. Let’s get right to it. One of the things that I couldn’t help, and I’m sure everyone asks you about it, is how you began in technology was you worked on autonomous vehicles. So vehicles that drive themselves. And why don’t you give the watchers and listeners a little bit about A, what you’re doing now and then how you got there.

Ahmed Elsamadisi:

Yeah. So today, we do leverage AI but our focus is in helping people answer questions. So Narrator is a data platform that allows you to ask and answer any question in minutes. And the magic of it, the whole thing happens while data is in your data warehouse using a single table. So it’s a very unique approach to answering questions and it works really, really well. Inspired by a lot of the work I’ve done in the past. So back step my career three steps before this, I built out a data team at WeWork. So got to build other infrastructure, grew the team, a lot of fun stories there.

And then before that, I did AI for [inaudible 00:37:50], checking discrimination, really dealing with fast moving objects, going out of space and inside and what you do there. And before that, I was in self-driving cars in 2010, which if you guys don’t know, where a lot of the cars initially started from known as a [inaudible 00:38:07] challenge. And I spent a lot of time again, working on tracking and localization. So how do you know where it is? How does a car know how to navigate the world with error, with uncertainty and really make it that experience that we have today?

Adam Degraide:

I am not a big fan of self-driving cars yet. I think it’s going to take… I love the feel of holding the wheel and driving it myself. I have a lot of cars and I enjoy driving them. And I’ve recently driven, I rented a Tesla when I went to Oklahoma City and you have the option, and I couldn’t bring myself to try it. In your experience, how safe is that really still to this day? Is it safer than letting a human drive for real?

Ahmed Elsamadisi:

It’s safer than a lot of humans. So think about it this way and-

Adam Degraide:

That’s the best thing anybody’s ever said. “It’s safer than a lot of humans.”

Ahmed Elsamadisi:

Yeah, because that’s the point. The point of self-driving car, is not to compete with the elite driver who’s alert and aware and is focused, it’s to help with the tired driver who’s driving for four hours and is like, “Okay, I want to get there but I’m not as focused because I’m exhausted.” And those drivers make so much more mistakes. And all you have, is a vehicle that’s looking around. This is actually the same thing in Narrator. When we think about answering questions, we don’t want to replace your intelligence to answer the question. We don’t give you an answer. We’re not like, “Hey, X matters.” You’ll be like, “Tough. I need to do my job. I need to think about it. What do you know?” So what we do, is think about these things as augmenters. Really an ability for you to, if you’re driving and a car’s coming from a really weird angle and it’s moving at fast speeds that you don’t feel like… The computer can see that much easier than you can and the computer can start alerting you, even if it’s just flashing, “Look in your fucking mirror.”

Think about just something as simple as what we had with blindside detection. You’re in the mirror- [inaudible 00:40:17] turns on. It’s nice. It’s helping you and it’s minimizing the worry that you are as a driver. That if something out of the ordinary happens, you’ll be aware. Because just those ability to notice those things is just a lot higher. And in Narrator, we do the same thing. You might see something and you might see, “This is so much better than this.” And Narrator’s like, “Great. You can start there, but let us just give you more guidance where the fact that your business has changed over time.” And that might be better in aggregation, but that’s really driven by the early customers. And nowadays, it’s actually the opposite. All these small things that you’re likely to make mistakes in, computers can really just check all of them much faster and tell you what’s important without you having to actually go in and do that work. So it’s never going to be that replacement.

Adam Degraide:

It’s funny because I build software for a living myself as well, too. And it really is designed to enable and help highlight areas of strength, cover areas of weaknesses. But back to the car thing, and we’re not going to stay in this all the time, I promise you this, but I’m just thinking about it. Because I bought a few new cars and they all had these settings that won’t let me go into another lane without letting the blinker know that I’m going to go in the other lane. So if you’re driving down the highway and you start to take a left, it’ll try to pull you back. That drives me crazy, that stuff. And so I always shut that stuff off. I go back to the dealership and say, “I don’t want any of this stuff on. I want to be able to run into anything I want to run into.” Because I think in some cases, that’s more dangerous.

I’m in a car right now I rented, because I’m here in the summer here in California. And I’m driving around in this Mercedes that I can’t listen to my music or talk radio if I’m coming up to somebody and it thinks I’m going too fast, it’ll shut my music down. So it forces me to say, “Oh, I got to stop. I was stopping anyway. So I think one of the things that’s frustrating to people in general, is that technology’s great but when it’s tried to be forced on you too much, I think it becomes a detriment in some ways. It can actually do the exact opposite of what we intended it to do. Not that Narrator does that. I’m not saying that. I’m saying just a case of self-driving cars and this awareness system of like, “Oh, you’re an idiot. You’re going too fast, you need to slam on the brakes.” And then the brakes will lock on you. It’s crazy. When I’m driving, totally fine.

Ahmed Elsamadisi:

So I would say that’s shitty software.

Adam Degraide:

That’s my point, that’s my point. Not all software is created equal.

Ahmed Elsamadisi:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wouldn’t say that’s the problem with the intelligence of a car. So we have this thing all the time with Narrator as well. Here’s a funny thing, we do a lot of stuff that is… People always say, “Why don’t you just run every possible combination and then tell me what matters?” And I’m like, “Because nobody was going to do anything with that. I want it to be actionable with what you’re doing today. I want it to be English, I want it to explain to you. I want you to read it [inaudible 00:43:24] thoughts or evidence.” And I think it’s that level of little nuance that matters. If you’re already hitting the break, the computer’s job is to guide you, not ensure the action. And I think a lot of times, and this happens in data software, some data software tries to give you the answer. They forget that the answer is actually garbage. No one cares.

The job is to get you to take action. That’s it. So if you’re already taking the action, me telling you… If 99% of all your customers are women and me telling you, “Women convert better than men.” You’re like, “Cool.” You don’t care. If you’re driving and you’re breaking and it’s like, “Break, break, break.” You’re just like, “Oh, shut the fuck up. I already know that.” And now, your brain starts ignoring those signals as important. So less signals, better signals. Signals that are designed to get you to do something, not get the car to do something. And I think that little nuance is a difference between quality and [inaudible 00:44:26]. That’s it. So if I was designing a car, my goal would be, “How do I get you to hit the break?” How hard to hit the break? I would trust you on that, but I want to make sure you’re actually hitting the break. But the cars are looking and saying, “Oh, you’re still so close. No, no, no. We got to warn you.” And it’s like no, you know what you’re doing.

Adam Degraide:

On your website that I was reading about you before you came on, it says that you made a better Ironman out of rubber. What does that mean?

Ahmed Elsamadisi:

Okay, so here’s the problem with Ironman. Ironman sucks and there’s many why reasons Ironman sucks. One of the biggest reasons, is that for Ironman to walk in the street, it’s using the same amount of energy as if Ironman is walking through a wall. And that level of animation, when you actually go to build a real Ironman, what happens is you have to predict the leg motion and you have to walk and you have to move the entire thing to move. It’s also very heavy and dense, which means you need a huge power source. In the movie, they invent a nuclear reactor that fits in your thing. But in reality, you don’t have a nuclear reactor.

Adam Degraide:

I’m wearing a circle, I’m wearing a circle in honor of Ironman. Ironman sucks.

Ahmed Elsamadisi:

It’s true. So there’s so much energy used in Ironman and it’s so efficient. And then when you have these ginormous things, there has to be a cooling system to not have the person in Ironman overheat and die. So you’re talking about a very just heavy, not moveable, highly inefficient system because it’s made [inaudible 00:46:04]. So Ironman has a bunch of benefits. One of the benefits is super strength and being able to move things. So it turns out what you can do, is rubber is elastic.

Adam Degraide:

Yeah.

Ahmed Elsamadisi:

What that means, is that if you wear a rubber suit and it’s like open when you’re walking, it’s zero energy because you’re just stretching the rubber. But rubber, if you pressurize it with, imagine like liquid nitrogen, which imagine a big paintball gun and you put that much air pressure as you know from your car, that can apply a lot of pressure. Like, deforming that to spaces out can apply a lot of force. So the idea of building the Ironman out of rubber, was that you can understand if someone’s struggling and allow them to pick up a desk or pick up a person or pick up something and run with it as if it’s nothing. Because you can get so much more force into your body thanks to that pressure tank, but the suit’s still being light and you don’t have to build an air system, you don’t have to make it cost a billion dollars, you don’t have to build an entire energy system to use it. You can have something that gives you super strength, but still super cheap to build and super easy and lightweight to use when it’s not active.

Adam Degraide:

And that rounds out all the interviews, the first five of the third quarter here on David vs Goliath. It was awesome. We had such a great time. Hopefully my house is still standing. We don’t know yet. The hurricane should be coming in a few hours. It’s getting pretty bad outside. But anyway, great to spend some time with you guys this week. Hope you enjoyed the recap and we’ll see you next week on the David vs Goliath podcast. Have an awesome day.