POWER CEOS (Aired 08-04-25) How Leaders Can Harness AI with Precision, Integrity and Strategy

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Sam. Welcome to Power CEOs, the truth behind the business. I'm Jen Goday, your fearless host, entrepreneur, investor, and business strategist. Why are we here? Because iron sharpens iron. And when we bring industry leaders to the table to talk about what's working and maybe even what's not, we're all able to learn and grow. As a result, our businesses grow and the ripple effect impacts not only ourselves, our teams and their families, but, but also our communities and our world. We're diving headfirst into AI gold today. The growing gap between excitement and execution is happening. I have brought to you industry leader Steven Ibaraki, global tech futurist and venture partner, who advises some of the world's top leaders on AI ethics and emerging technologies. If you're a founder, an executive, or an investor, this conversation is going to help you cut through the noise and get clear on how to integrate AI with precision and integrity and strategy. Welcome to the show, Stephen. [00:01:31] Speaker B: Hey, it's such a pleasure to be here. And what an awesome introduction. So much energy and passion. Love it. [00:01:38] Speaker A: Thank you. Well, I'm going to ask you because I look up to you, I read your stuff, I follow you because you really are the intersection of what's coming and at the bleeding edge. So what's real right now with AI? What's just overhyped noise? And. And for those of us who are actively looking to work with this technology, what are the things we really need to know? [00:02:04] Speaker B: You know, Jeff or Jen, I just. I should give you a little bit of context, though. Do you mind if I give you a bit of context? [00:02:10] Speaker A: Sure. [00:02:12] Speaker B: Okay. So I've been looking at the future of AI since I was really young and sort of predicting, let's say, 60 years out and then in the 70s, predicting 50 years out in the 60s or in the 80s, predicting, you know, 40 years out. And now I'll bring you up to sort of the present. In 2015, I was asked by a group of financial service CEOs if I can buy some where tech was going 10 to 15 years into the future. And these CEOs happen to represent 92.7 trillion in assets under management. And, and really the GDP of the world at that time was something like 55 or 60 trillion dollars. And I was advising them on where tech is today. And I recall some of the feedback thinking, no, that's impossible. Maybe that's 100 years out or 50 years out. So keep that in mind. And this is back in 2015, and in 2016, I did a keynote at The International Conference of Software Engineering. It's actually the number one conference in the world in this area. And I was actually predicting where we are today. I talked about quantum computing and AI and conversational chats and things like that with AI. I was talking about chip technologies and CRISPR tech and so on. And again, there was this. I didn't get pushback, but there was a lot of surprise because people thought, were thinking that this was, you know, 2000 or 2050 or 2100. And literally if you went back, let's say, 10 years and you went to most leaders or most to AI experts and described what we have today where AI is actually able to create music and do videos and you have this conversational agent and more, they would have said, that's artificial general intelligence. They would have said, no, that's maybe 20, 30, 50 years out. So, so I wanted to give you that context. Now to your question. Where do I see this going? Well, I can tell you that I don't believe now you can predict more than 20, 25 years out. In fact, I would say it's now the next maybe 10, 15 years. The reason is we have this convergence that's happening between supercomputing and quantum computing and chip technologies and biomedical innovation integrated in all of this as AI, machine learning. Together with that, you have robotics and automation, you have nanotechnologies, brain computer interfaces, neurotechnologies. You have things like new kinds of energy and storage and even new kinds of connectivity. In fact, people may not realize that, you know, right now in America and throughout the world, we have 5G. China is already testing 10G to see, you know, what that's going to look like. So the future is here. Now what's happening, all of this is going to have a flywheel effect where they accelerate each other and they build on each other. And that's why I'm saying that you're gonna, we're into an era where unimaginable things are gonna be happening. Just like if we went back 10 years and we described what we have today, people would have thought, no, that's, that's not possible. That's science fiction. So what does that mean? That means things like drug discovery and in ways that used to take 10 years or 15 years to be condensed down to a few years or even less. You're talking about AI discovering new kind of mathematical theorems and, or proving different kind of mathematical problems that used to be used to take mathematicians and their top students 6 months years to do. AI will be able to do it. And now it even be to give you some examples. And then, you know, this kind of convergence of all the agents that are out there. And I want the audience to reflect, like think to yourself, do you use AI now every day? Are you using the traditional search? Are you using GPTs in some way to do search? Are you finding that you're kind of interacting in a different way and something that now it's become commonplace? Right. And the other thing then is then how are you going to implement that into your businesses? How is that going to affect the government and what they're doing? How's that going to affect NGOs and UN and science organizations, organizations and so on. So I wanted to kind of lay that context. Unimaginable things. In fact, I did a Fireside with Vinod Khosla, really famous investor. I did this with the acm. We're number one in computing science in the world. We have the top awards in this area and things like that. And when I did the Fireside chat and I. And again, I'm just kind of paraphrasing what he said, but I recommend you look to the original chat just by searching for acm, my name. And then Vedant Khosla, really famous entrepreneur, he had a great exit. Sun Microsystems went on to become a really famous investor. And in fact he's made the Forbes Midas touch list many, many, many times. But he even talks about things like what's going to happen, you know, robotics in five years will be like unimaginable. And then he's talking about going further out in time, predicting there'll be a billion of these, you know, walking entities that will integrate with us. And in fact, if you look at things like figure AI and the work they're doing, they got a new model called the Helix model and it's using VLA vision, language, action and it can generalize. And I would say that the only thing preventing this from being in your home today is just to make sure that there's, you know, safety rails on these things. So that's something, you know, something doesn't happen if you have them in your home or something like that, you know, but you have, you know, BMW already testing them in their factories and so on. So sometimes when I talk to people, I say, you realize that you can get this now from Unitry, you can get a robot, you can buy it, you still have to do some manual control of it. But I'm saying in two years these things will have this kind of relative independence for sure. In five years, you'll have them in your home. So what does that mean to you? Or you look at even autonomous vehicles. Waymo is now, you know, got millions and millions of miles where these things, autonomous vehicles are, you know, people taking people around. And so again, to the audience, have you visited some of the cities, you've taken some of these autonomous vehicles and the first time you take it, it's like scary. And then you think, you know, this is kind of like amazing. Right. So that's the future we're coming up to. And then I can get into specific examples of things you should be following. [00:09:04] Speaker A: Yeah. So I just want to kind of summarize a couple of the things that you said because it's really important and I want to highlight that before we go to break. And the first one I want to highlight is 10 years ago, Steven predicted what we're using and seeing today. And, and people thought, there's no way this is going to be 2050. Well, we're here and now things that we thought were going to be in 2050 or 2100, that's within five years. It's really a compressed timeline. And the next thing I want to highlight is, and I did do the riderless taxi and it scared the bejeezm out of me the first time I literally took a video and was sending it to people I loved and saying, I'm not sure if I'm going to survive this because it was different, it was strange for me, but it got the job done. So what Stephen was saying is think about what's available today and what's coming in the next two to five years and evaluate. What does that mean for you? What does that mean for taxi drivers and Uber drivers? If we now have autonomous cars, how do we prepare? What do we do to leverage our skill sets and upscale because we're going to tie in the next. The next segment after the break, we're going to talk about how do you prevent second order impacts that are negative from happening? How do we put those guardrails in? What do we need to be thinking about as leaders so that we can usher in and lead by example from the front of the room in this AI empowered world? We do have to take a brief break, but we will be right back after these important messages. Welcome Back to Power CEOs, the truth behind the business. If you're just tuning in, you're going to want to go to NowMedia TV, click on shows, go to power CEOs and catch the first segment of today's episode. It has been pure gold. I am here with Steven Ibaraki. He is a futurist and a leader in the AI and technology space. And he was sort of sharing some of the things that we thought might be 25 years out that are actually right around the corner in the next two and a half to five years. So without further ado, Steven, I want to dive right in to something that you brought up. And you said there's things that are not available publicly because we want to make sure that it's safety, we want to put the guardrails in. What do we as entrepreneurs have to consider as we are adopting AI, as we're looking at where things are going so that we can continue to be, quite frankly, in business in this new age? But also what do we have to consider, economically speaking, as maybe jobs are displaced? What are the things that we should be paying attention to as leaders that often go ignored? [00:12:08] Speaker B: You know, that's a really good question. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to point to resources because it requires a lot of study. So for example, the number one organization in the world is ACM, association for Computing Machinery. We've been around for like 77 plus years. We have the top conferences in this area, we have the top journals, the top sub organizations and just become a member. We're a nonprofit, so it's very inexpensive. You get daily news briefs and things like that. You can join different committees and join some of the conferences that we have around the world to participate in this conversation. We've got a code of ethics and the code of ethics actually addresses the implications of AI. And also from an operational standpoint, if you're developing AI, how can you do it safely? I'll name another organization. It's called the ieee. In fact, I'm embedded in all these organizations. I'm not talking theory. They've been around for about 145 years, something like that. They are number one in technology engineering and they've been looking at this for a long, long time. And they produce standards in this area. First there was like frameworks and then there's standards, which means it's been operationalized and you can get guidance. Then again, if your business wants to implement it, what are the things you have to look for? If your developers in your company are creating these kind of technologies, what are the things that you need to develop to what, what kind of standards should you be developing too? So that's a. Another great organization. There's another one called ifip in the same way, it's the International Federation, which is like a. An alliance of different computing organizations. In fact, the IEEE and the ACM and another organization out of Canada called Kipps, our founders. If you want national organizations, then IFIP has all of these national organizations around the world which can help with guidance. So that's kind of like on the, on the tech side, the tech organization side. Let's say you wanted a corporation that you think is doing great work in this area and you want to follow their work or. Well, Microsoft has been around for a long, long, long time, right? Like about five decades. And they've been looking at the implications of this and responsible AI and trustworthy AI and Azure AI services. And they have a lot of different material that's available to guide both developers, managers and even CEOs if you want to plan the safe implementation of these different kinds of technologies. If you want to look at the un, UNESCO has quite a bit of material in this area. They've done a job and try to harmonize what's out there. There's another UN organization called the Unitu. In fact, the ITU is the oldest UN organization. It's 160 years old. And that's because standards were required prior to the formation of the un and they just finished this past week their AI for Good Global Summit. It's the largest sustainable AI solutions summit and program in the world. They are also working on standards and all of these areas in terms of safety guidelines and so on. Now, if you're looking for a particular country, Canada was the first to come up with an AI strategy, national strategy, a lot of material there, it's free. Singapore is very good. And in fact, there's something called the AI foundation where they provide a lot of free tools. If you're implementing these things, if you're looking for great books, ready. Melody is a serial CXL that has successfully implemented AI in many, many companies. And what he decided to do was take that experience and then put it into a book. I recommend you look at that. It's what AI Unleashed and have a look at his book. There's many others I can recommend. I'm on the board with another gentleman. He's. His name is Bert Ko. He used to be a manager in AI at Microsoft. He then left to do a stint with McKinsey and now he's going for his MBA. But all during this time at MIT, he was actually teaching businesses and things like that how to implement AI. So put that into a book and again, his name is Brooke Keifel and he sits on the ACM board. So, so those are some of the books that are, can guide you in the safe implementation of this. And then governments around the world are, you know, like OECD has a number of guidelines that these governments coming together and saying how can we address this? And then individual governments as well, and governments working with the un so there's a lot of different programs out there where there's content and ways to safely implement this. And for you that you can take a look at now, the one that I'm probably the easiest to consume would be with the ACM Association Computer Machinery or the ieee. [00:17:27] Speaker A: You know, I thank you for that. You just dropped tons of resources. If you are watching, I will be sure to put this in my group and reach out to me if you would like a list of these resources. I have them already compiled and then some more because I've, I've met and heard Steven speak multiple times. So I'm happy to provide that if you're watching and you need that because we did go through quite a bit. But Steven, I'm going to ask for those of us who are thinking about this. Workforce displacement is a real conversation right now and it's a core part of a lot of discussions in my peer groups and in the clients that I work with. I'm sure you see this. What, what are you seeing? And, and what are your, what is your advice to people who are seeing that may jobs are going to be disrupted and, or displaced? How soon in the process do we think about upskilling and, and offloading and giving some resources to these people? Are, are you involved with some of that? Are there resources for the employees that maybe their roles are. There's no more place for that role as it stands. What are your thoughts on that? [00:18:39] Speaker B: So again, going back to the context with the 100 CEOs that approached me and to kind of predict where things are going actually future work was a prime area that we wanted to work on and we did right. And precisely those questions. Displacement, how do you handle that? Reskilling, how do you handle that? And that's an active discussion within all of the resources that I've already mentioned. So keep that in mind. The other thing too is that there is an alliance in the US called the CEO Leadership Alliance, Orange County. They've got an AI talent initiative. I'm on their executive working group. I was asked, invited in and I suggested that they were looking for an area to sort of concentrate on. And I suggested working with Them that AI would be a good one. And how do you implement that? How do you do it safely? And then in turn, how do you onboard people, how do you reskill? What is the job displacement aspects of it? That program is very, very successful. They're working with K12 schools, colleges, employers, state government, cities, counties and so on. And then what that they did is they've now scaled that into the National Talent collaborative, working with 37 groups around the US leadership groups. In terms of talent, how do you manage what's happening? How do you make sure that that transition is done in a way that will do it in a positive way or as positive as you can? Because clearly jobs are going to be lost. So, so how do you manage that and how do you reskill those people where jobs are to going to be lost? And of course new jobs we created as well that never existed before. So, so there, there's resources out there already looking at what this means and then how to manage that journey. [00:20:30] Speaker A: And Steven, we have just another couple of minutes before we have to break, but I'm going to ask you what is the one question that entrepreneurs should be asking themselves? Maybe if they had one focus point this quarter to assess the current risk or opportunity with AI and all of these converging technologies, what, what recommendation would you give to them? [00:20:53] Speaker B: You know, one of the things that Bernard Khoslav mentioned when I did the Fireside was he actually spends hours each day reading on the Outlier. I would say the number one thing you should be doing is reading on the outlier what's on the edge. And that will best prepare you to what's upcoming and so that you'll be sort of future proofing what you're doing. I have other recommendations if we get into that after the break. [00:21:18] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree with you more. If we're not paying attention to what's on the edge and what's coming, we're blind. We're basically flying blind. And one of the things that you and I have talked about in the past and that I've heard you speak about is what is happening, how is this going to enhance human capability? Because I truly believe that AI and technology, technology is here so that we can get back to being human. What are your thoughts on that and what are the things that are going to keep that front and center as we are in this increasingly technological age? [00:21:53] Speaker B: Just think of human capability being magnified a thousand X. That's what's going to happen. [00:22:01] Speaker A: So fascinating. I really enjoy everything. If you were Watching folks. And you want to learn more, Stephen, how can they reach out to you and learn more, follow you and see more about what you're doing and the resources that. And Stephen has been interviewed several people. I strongly recommend you watch his interviews. But how can they reach out to you? Steven? [00:22:22] Speaker B: You know, that's a great question. So I'm actually full. I've been at the maximum LinkedIn for the last 10 years. So probably the best way is just follow my interviews and they appear with the AC, IEEE, KIPS, iFix, a number of different organizations. So. [00:22:40] Speaker A: Fantastic. Follow, follow Steven. He is phenomenal. He has got a ton of resources at your fingertips. We do have to take a brief break, but I just want to emphasize how important it is. If you've got your head in the sand here and you're watching and this has got you in fear mode, please, please take a breath because AI is here whether we want it or not and we get to choose the how we want to interact now and in the future. But the day is today to take this action. If we don't know anything about it, we need to start learning. You've got resources that Steven has provided. Pick up one, read something, start the learning process. I Recommend you take 15 minutes per day. Don't overwhelm yourself, but 15 minutes each day of strategic learning in this space will help you to get more educated and start to feel a little bit more competent and take that fear away. So that's my action step to you. If you're a little bit taken aback by this or you're still in fear, it's really important that this become a part of your everyday. Whether you are a founder, an executive, whether you're an investor, or whether you're watching because you're an intrapreneur in an organization, today is the day to really dive in and start that process. We will be right back for more after these important messages. [00:24:04] Speaker B: Actually, this next one is another community. [00:24:21] Speaker A: Foreign welcome back to power CEOs. We are going to shift gears just a little bit. But first, if you're just tuning in, you're going to want to go to NowMedia TV and catch the first half of today's show. It was all things AI, what to expect, how can we lead through that change. But now we're going to shift gears a little bit. You know that we bring industry leaders and we talk about what's working, what's not. But today I want to spotlight a business builder at another stage because understanding today's startup challenges is equally as important. As mastering the exit. Today I'm joined by friend of mine and founder of Dash Splints, Brad Doming. A game changing advancement in emergency medicine. From new IP to long business to business sales cycles, breaking into the medical industry is a battlefield and Brad's fighting it from the front, front lines. As a veteran and EMT turned entrepreneur. Welcome to the show. [00:25:19] Speaker C: Thank you, Jen. [00:25:20] Speaker A: Listen, you are taking on a deeply entrenched space. Anything in medicine is hard for us to change. I know. I was in sports medicine for 20 years and you're in splinting where we have become accustomed to the same old, same old. What made you confident enough to develop this new technology and take it into the marketplace? [00:25:45] Speaker C: I guess it comes from my experience of being a combat medic in Iraq and a medic on the ambulance. So I saw firsthand what needed as a medic and I developed it from there knowing that we need it, but it's going to be hard to get it out there. You know, you hear a lot of times like big pharma and all big medical and all this stuff. So, you know, I had so much, I guess, trust in my design that I had to push it. You know, I really feel like if I was a medic in Iraq and I had a choice of the splints that were out there and in mine, I know it might seem biased me saying it, but I really felt like I needed that. And with that background, I think everybody else that's in the same line of work will think the same thing. [00:26:40] Speaker A: Well, that's fine and dandy, right? But how do you convince ER teams, sports medicine teams, procurement managers to try your tech when vendor agreements and outdated solutions are kind of the default? [00:26:52] Speaker C: Yes, it's hard. You have to really reach out to them or know somebody. I'm realizing that networking is the key. You have to know someone that can refer you to, talk to this person or whatever and you go meet them, you show it to them, you let them play with it and once you do that, they're like, man, this is really nice. You know, I've even made, you know, social media videos where I'm demonstrating what's on the market. Now what I'm doing, you know, with the splints, you know, letting you know people even talk on the social media, what are they looking for, what do they like? And that's kind of helped out a lot, you know. [00:27:30] Speaker A: Well, you know, I agree with that, but I think there's also another tick to this because you're solving something that hasn't Been solved. Your solution is more comfortable to the patient. It doesn't have to be removed in diagnostics like X ray, et cetera. So you're not having to jostle a potential fracture and cause more pain for imagery. It could be left on for that and the current solutions are not. So talk to me a little bit about how have you developed that unique selling proposition? And the perception out there is that a good product or a superior product is going to sell itself, but that's not the case. So talk to us a little bit about that aspect. [00:28:16] Speaker C: That's a very good point. Often, whenever I get the chance to show my splint to someone, I'll use what most companies or most medics are using, by far like the leading one, and I'll demonstrate this is what you're doing to apply this. And then this is mine. And when they see that, oh man, this is so much faster, so much easier. You know, the light bulb, you can see it almost come on. And yes, you know, being. It is to me and others will say it once they see it, it is the better product. But that doesn't get the sales. It's not. You still have to go and reach out and you have to, you know, use your, your other people to tell you, hey, here's a lead. Call this person and go and show it to them. It doesn't just happen overnight. [00:29:06] Speaker A: And then, and then, just because you show it to them and they want it doesn't mean that it's. It's something, something in this fiscal year. So you have to get vendor agreements. It's a very long sales cycle. And so it really is a challenge. So as a startup, specifically, cash flow is a major issue. And it's not like you're selling a service digitally and there's a low overhead. You actually had startup costs and overhead. So talk to me a little bit about how you've managed that aspect, because a lot of entrepreneurs out there, especially in the first couple of years right now, they're ready to throw in the towel because it's hard. And cash flow is a problem because of economics and geopolitical stress or tariffs or whatever there is happening in the marketplace and they're ready to give up. But you're not giving up. You're continuing to press forward because, you know, it's just a longer sales cycle. How do you make ends meet? [00:29:55] Speaker C: You have to really think about, like, what can I do to make more money? Right. So I looked at a couple of different things and learning stuff from, from your CEO coaching on how to use AI and that I went there and I talked to the AI that I have set up and I figured out that. Bless you, thank you. That, you know, that threw me off the AI. [00:30:23] Speaker A: You went to AI? [00:30:23] Speaker C: Yes, AI. So I realized, okay, what's one way that I can make money? And one was like sharpening scissors, like for hairstylists. There's nobody in my area that's doing it. So I'm hustling, you know, when I'm not doing stuff for Dash to make extra money to keep Dash going. DoorDash is another thing. So it kind of went, you know, hand in hand. I'm doing DASH plants and I was thinking of doordash, so I started doordashing so that way I can keep money coming in to support my family and get this going. Because it takes a while. You know, stuff doesn't happen overnight. It's not going to. You don't see businesses, you might think that they happened overnight, and if it did, they probably had a lot of people that was already working on that way ahead of time, you know, so it takes time and I know that. So I'm just pushing through the time and doing whatever I can to hustle the money. [00:31:12] Speaker A: Yeah. And, you know, I want to just highlight something that you've said a couple of times, and that's relationships are everything you need to get in the door first. You're doing that leveraging your background as a paramedic and as a veteran to sort of cut through the noise and get seen. But it's not just about showing the product. It's about the follow up and follow through and constantly building that relationship and adding value and staying relevant. What are some of the ways that you're doing that? [00:31:39] Speaker C: Well, I guess my background in the medical field and some of these people that are giving me these leads, they're still in the medical field in that. Um, so I want to really kind of like highlight how that is like the way to get it. You know, I can go there, I can just show up to somebody and, you know, at an ambulance company or whatever and show them the splint and that, you know, I don't care how good it is, I don't care what price I give them, I'm probably not going to get it. But if I have someone refer me to them, my chances have just exponentially, like going up. And that's what I'm seeing. You know, I had people that I didn't even really remember anymore from the ambulance company, and they contacted me because they saw it on LinkedIn and because they saw it on LinkedIn and they saw someone else shared it that I used to work with, they were interested and guess what? I got the sale. [00:32:31] Speaker A: Because they knew you. [00:32:32] Speaker C: Yes. They knew you knew someone else referred it. I can't explain, I guess in a sense how much I'm learning from, from that. Like someone else pushing your product is the way to go. [00:32:44] Speaker A: Always. You know, testimonials sell better. Our clients sell our services better than we ever could ourselves. Because I can tell you until I'm blue, I'm blue in the face that I can scale businesses. But when my customers or my clients who have scale businesses and exited businesses tell you, oh, that's who helped me get there, guess what? It does a lot of the work for you. [00:33:04] Speaker C: You know, I can kind of relate it to this, you know, because a lot of people are parents these days and I see this with my kids. I try to teach them certain things and you can tell something till you're blue in the face and they're not going to get it, they're not going to do it. But someone else tells them the same exact thing that you've been telling them and they do it. It's kind of the same thing. [00:33:24] Speaker A: It's awesome. So I just want to kind of highlight a couple of things that we've talked about. Especially if you're a startup or you're a small business that's kind of in a little bit of a struggle, struggle bus or cash flow. How, how do you make it in an industry where everybody trusts the status quo? It's about building relationships, it's about showing up, having, having the product or service, giving that excellent customer care and having that person advocate for you. Because when we open, when we do amazing things and we add value to our clients, they become advocates for our businesses and open other doors which get us in, expedite that sales cycle. Now does it solve the whole sales cycle when we're dealing business to business? No. There's still vendor agreements and other things that takes longer than just selling to consumers. But that relationship capital isn't something that happens overnight. It requires us continually showing up, continually adding value and being visible. So Brad told you basically who did you know? Who have you worked with? Who are the people in your, in your neighborhood and how can they, like, how can you leverage the relationships that you already have to advance where you are and to get in more doors? So it's really important that you start asking your questions. But it also was two sided the other Side of it was he took responsibility and he knew that cash flow was a problem. So he said, what else can I do? And he leveraged AI to help him find the right service that would have a high margin that would support his family while he continues to build his business. I'm sorry, I know you wanted to say something. [00:34:52] Speaker C: Okay, so you said something that was really good, you know, you said about a neighbor. That's how I got my very first sale. There was a neighbor, honestly, that would walk his dog every day, you know, and, you know, he'd come by, he'd always talk to my little. My little girl and come to find out he was in sports medicine for ul. And as soon as I got the first batch made, I contacted him and he bought some and then he like them so much, he referenced me to someone else and then they bought him. And that's how it started. And there you go. It was from me just simply talking to a neighbor that was passing by. And there you go. [00:35:27] Speaker A: I absolutely love that story because it's true. We never know who it's all about, who knows us. We never know who our neighbors, our friends, our family, our colleagues, our vendors. We don't know who's in their network. If we don't. If we don't have the conversations and build that. We do have to take a brief break, but I want you to stick around because we're going to dive even deeper into ways to be successful as a startup and how to really make it happen in today's world. We'll be right back. Foreign welcome back to power CEOs. We are here with Brad of Dash Splints and we have dive into what does it really take in today's world? Sometimes using personal experts, expertise maybe pivoting to stay afloat as we're building our business and the reality of entrepreneurship, which often demands more creativity over capital. Before the break, we were talking a lot about the power of relationship capital, which we talk about a lot on this show. And if you're new, think about, who do you know? Who have you worked with? What does that look like? And just start to build your relationships. And I wanted to kind of bring through here a concept because we sort of touched on it in the last segment. But when Brad, when you ran into cash flow situation and you needed to generate revenue, you turned to AI to come up with what would solve that problem with you. How did you know to do that? And how did you leverage the tool to create that cash flow that's keeping you afloat? [00:37:28] Speaker C: Okay. So, well, every Monday, we have the CEO Mondays with Jen and Paula. And through that is really where I learned about AI in general. Then from there, from everything that we talked about on the CEO Mondays, I said to myself, I need to use that. You know, this is very valuable information. So I went to chat and I started typing in, you know, what is something that I can do, you know, here in Lafayette, you know, to make extra revenue on the side, whatever, and realize that that sharpening shears was the way to go. Like, there's nobody in our area, really, that is sharpening shears. So I went there and I looked at more stuff on the. On the machine, and I bought a machine and started reaching out to people. And there you go. Like, I started getting phone calls and making extra money from that, you know, and. And basically, AI is what told me what to do. [00:38:28] Speaker A: You research the market with it. You leverage the tool. And so we talk about AI a lot on this show, folks. And. And this is a real example of, of how he was able to generate cash flow while he builds his business. And so I want you to think about this because we've talked a lot about AI today. I want you to think about how can you come up with that next vertical, that next product? How can you research the market leveraging the tools that are so easy to leverage? And at our fingertips right now, you can research the market, you can see what the competition is, you can see what's the most viable option and solve the gaps that maybe provide you another income stream into your business or on the side of your business. So, Brad, you know, you mentioned. I appreciate you mentioning CEO Mondays for CEO Mondays is. It's a business mastermind that, that I lead. But how important in this, in this entire journey has mentorship and coaching been for you? Because I knew you at the beginning and I know you now, and you're much more savvy. You've done, like, you're very coachable. Everything that you. Everything that you come into contact with, whether it's me or somewhere else, you're literally just executing, executing and executing. So talk to me about the role of mentorship and PE peer groups and how that has been important for you. [00:39:45] Speaker C: Okay? So that's very important. You know, being an entrepreneur is not what people think. They think, you know, you just come into this money and they don't. [00:39:54] Speaker A: You. [00:39:54] Speaker C: You see them just having parties or whatever. It's nothing like that. It's a lot of hard work, and you get discouraged a lot, you know, so having that peer group and hearing, you know, other people's stories, what struggles they may have, what struggles you may have, and getting feedback from them has been probably the leading thing that's been pushing me to keep going, because I want to keep going to that meeting to help keep pushing them as well. That's really the meat and potatoes of it, is having someone to show you and talk to you like, hey, don't give up, you're doing great. Because we don't have that like anyone else. You think of people that look at celebrities, they might have a poster on the wall and that's great. But when you have a question, you know, are you gonna ask the poster, you know, who's gonna help you, right? So, you know, that's where this comes in. You know, I have a mentor. I can go, you know, I've had it to where something happened and I was freaking out and I was like, I sent an email like, hey, Jim, what do I do? I don't know what to do. And there you go. I had my mentor call me and say, okay, stay calm. This is what you need to do. And that's important. You, you have to have that. You know, it's crucial, it's critical. You have to have it. [00:41:08] Speaker A: I couldn't agree more. And I have coaches and mentors. I'm part of peer groups as well. And, you know, it's lonely to be an entrepreneur. Most of our friends might be W2 or maybe they're retired, like they're in different stages of life. And the challenges that we face as entrepreneurs, folks, they're challenges that not everybody can associate with or understand. You know, we're about 10% of the population have, have ever been in business or been an entrepreneur. So it's a subset. And if we don't have those peer groups, we don't have those mentors or those, those conversations, we feel like we're on an island when things happen and we don't really have somewhere to go. So it's really important that we do that. Not just to help us improve our business and to push one another and to hold each other accountable and to cheer one another on, but also for our mental health and well being. Because if you're going through a struggling time right now, and a lot of entrepreneurs are, a lot of, of entrepreneurs are struggling right now, then having other people who are going through the same thing helps you to see you're not alone and you can brainstorm that together. So it's so incredibly important. And that brings me to the next thing, because one of the things that happened on one of our Mastermind calls actually was we talked about the Go bag and you have implemented that. And that's a resource. And it maybe not be related to your exact business and per se, but it's taking your expertise and adding value to your clients and their clients, per se. Talk to me a little bit about that concept, what it is, how you came with it and how you're able to leverage that to add value. That's not necessarily a Dash splint. [00:42:41] Speaker C: Okay. So, you know, again, learning stuff from CEO Mondays is, you know, sometimes you need to add more stuff to what you're doing. And, you know, a lot of stuff you see on the online is, you know, first aid bags. Being, I guess I'm in the military, I kind of know a little bit more about Go bags and things like that. But, you know, that kind of dovetails itself. So I've even been recently reached out to someone to maybe go into business with them or help each other out, because that's what he does is he makes emergency bags and he does teaching for first aid and things like that. So that could also bring a different revenue stream, you know, with dashboards. By having Dash splints in his, you know, first aid bags. [00:43:28] Speaker A: Absolutely. And, you know, having that idea, I will tell you, we were, we were having. It was. We were afraid we were going to be at war. We didn't know what was going to happen. It was. And so people were kind of freaking out and panicking in a lot of different ways. People were in fear. Customers don't buy when they're in fear. They lock down. And that conversation was a peer group conversation. And he brought up that, hey, yeah, well, this is how you protect yourself, because this is what might happen. And actually he predicted some things that ended up happening during that time period. But that's really important for us to be able to ping ideas and come up with what matters most because he had his own test group right in the. Right in the room with them. So I want to ask you, looking back, what do you wish you knew before you started on entrepreneurship, especially in the healthcare field? [00:44:20] Speaker C: It's gonna sound funny, but yeah, I was one of those that thought, you know, if you have a great idea, it's gonna sell itself. I fell into that trap, I mean, big time, because I knew the split that I invented being I was a medic, that it was great. You know, I took the flaws in what was out there. And that market, market, like, hasn't changed in 20 years. So I Knew I had something new. It's innovative, you know, it's going to sell itself. Boy, was I wrong. You know, it is great. It is, you know, but it doesn't happen overnight. It does not happen. It's a lot of hard work. You have a lot of ups and downs. That's something that you hear. But I wasn't quite prepared for it that way. [00:45:03] Speaker A: Well, because the Instagram life is. Oh, I thought of this idea. I started a business. Now I'm a billionaire. [00:45:09] Speaker C: Right. [00:45:09] Speaker A: That's everything. And it's just not true. [00:45:11] Speaker C: No, it's not. And you know, I fell into that trap, you know, I thought that I got a great idea. I'm going Facebook, I'm going to show it, it's going to take off and there you go, somebody's going to buy it within like a year, I retire. I know that's what you think. You know, if you just look at social media or you watch stuff on tv. And I fell into that, you know, and it's not that way. It's hard work. [00:45:37] Speaker A: It really is. And you know, it's resilience, it's grit, it's determination. It's also your excellent product and service. It's showing up and it's. It's a whole lot more. So, Brad, this conversation has been packed with insights. I know our viewers are walking away more inspired, prepared. You gave plenty of real world stories, so how can they connect with you? Or if they're interested in getting their hands on a dash splint or a go bag that we discussed. [00:46:03] Speaker C: So you can go to www.8splints.com. We have our website there. You can also. There is an email access on that website too, but you can go to splintsmail.com and email me. I will get back to you. I guarantee it. [00:46:22] Speaker A: Thank you so much for being here. [00:46:24] Speaker C: Thank you. [00:46:25] Speaker A: Absolutely. This was kind of raw and real conversation. Our audience absolutely needs. You know, I don't show the Instagram life. We talk about real stuff and what you can do to take action. So now it's time for you to take action. What is it that you heard today? Whether it was with Steven on AI or whether it was on Bread on how to increase your revenue streams, how to leverage AI in order to fund find those additional revenue streams. What is your action step? Because if you're just listening and you don't take action, there is no forward momentum. Action is where the magic happens. We have to execute in order to move forward. So pick that one thing and start now. Not tomorrow, not next week, but right now, so that you can create that forward momentum that is going to drive your business forward. So, unfortunately, all good things come to an end, including this show. But the good news is we will be here Saturday, same time, same station, next week. Until then, win today, win this week, and I'll see you next time.