Problem Solved: The IISE Podcast

Our guest today has used

industrial engineering

to build a fascinating career

in entrepreneurship, technology

and storytelling.

Guy Primus began at Georgia Tech,

then on to Harvard Business School.

He's consulted at Kearney

and then went on to work with

some of the biggest names

in entertainment.

He helped shape

digital media strategy

at Microsoft,

Starbucks, and later

became the CEO

of The Virtual Reality Company

where he created

award winning immersive experiences

like The Martian

VR and Jurassic World VR expedition.

He's also a patent holder,

a startup advisor

and a current

managing partner of Thriller

Dome, where he helps

startups turn

storytelling and technology

into movements

beyond his work

in business and entertainment.

Guy is deeply committed to mentorship,

supporting African American entrepreneurs

and helping create pathways

for underrepresented talent.

He served on several advisory boards,

and he's a 2013

Captain of Industry

honoree from the Institute

of Industrial and Systems Engineers.

Guy Primus welcome to Problem Solved.

And thank you so much for being here.

It's great. Great to be here.

All right.

Well, as people can probably tell

from that intro,

you've led a very unique career

and a life

that does not follow a roadmap.

But when you look across all of it,

you've got industrial

engineering

technology, entertainment,

entrepreneurship, all of that.

What is the thread

that connects all of

that together for you?

For me it is.

I love technology, and so,

problem solving is the basis

and the foundation

for my interest in technology.

How do you,

solve problems

that haven't been solved before?

And that's what engineers do, right?

You know, so the problem

solving and the technology

are a foundation and a bedrock.

But I also.

How do I say this?

Probably introverted to a certain extent.

And communicated through content.

Right.

Whether it was television or music,

because it gave me a common

frame of reference to communicate.

And so as I've

matured in my personal

and professional life,

you know, that

that language of content and,

you know,

the creative industries

are a way for me to express myself

because I'm not

the most eloquent speaker.

And, you know, it's not what came.

And I found that that's common

for a lot of engineers. Right?

You know, we'd

rather be in the basement, right?

You know, or

as Doctor Gray said in the lab. Right.

You know, that

that's really where I reside.

And, you know, the the,

connection of content

allows me to express myself

in a way that is comfortable. Yeah.

So in all of the

worlds that you've been in,

or that you're in now,

where do you see,

like, the fingerprints

of industrial engineering the most now,

where you are?

Yeah,

I there's always a need for analysis.

Right. You know, and so,

the analysis, you know, most recently

of how AI is used to solve,

you know, kind of society's problems

or your day to day, you know, problems.

Again,

I would mention that you know, kind of

not the most,

direct communicators

kind of goes back to my, my previous,

where I was right

before you and I go, you know,

so I'm learning to communicate better.

I'll just say that.

But, you know,

so that, you know, for me,

it is the ability to analyze

and then communicate

is, you know, kind of where I think

industrial engineering

lives, where I thrive. Right?

You know, it's in spreadsheets.

And then being able to articulate

what's in that spreadsheet

in a narrative format, in a way

that is well understood

by people and can result

in the desired action, right?

Whatever that desired action is,

whatever the problem definition is.

And again, that's where,

you know,

hopefully in our discussion, I'm

going to say it now,

but I hope it comes up time

and time again.

Defining the problem

and really understanding

what is your objective function.

And you kind of

industrial engineering speak. Right.

You know, so

a lot of us

operate in the constraints, right?

I always try to understand

what is the objective function

and then solve the problem

based on that objective function.

And sometimes there isn't one,

you know, problem to be solved.

There's a series of little problems.

But if you roll it up,

what's the,

you know, kind of in business, right.

It's income.

Right?

It's not revenue, it's not expenses.

It's income.

My friends or private equity people,

they would say it's not even it's

not even income, right. It's valuation.

And so, you know,

how do you define that problem

and make sure you're

solving the right problem.

But that's where industrial

engineering thinking and systems

thinking comes in.

For me,

it's like it's all connected to

whatever that objective function is.

Is that what led you to

industrial engineering

in the first place?

That need to like,

define the problem and solve the problem?

No, no, I'll say this

I started off as a physics major.

I told the story.

You know, I apologize

for people that have heard it

before, but,

I started off as a physics major

because I wanted to be Amar Bose.

Like,

I wanted to create

speakers and loud systems,

loudspeakers and, auditoriums and really,

you know, have the sound be,

you know, it was in the, in the band

and everything when I was in high school.

And so sound to me

is really, really important.

Probably because I don't see that.

Well. Right.

I've been wearing contacts since.

Yeah, I remember being in third grade

and they had to move my desk

to the front of the room,

and then I was a catcher, my.

So I was a good catcher

because I probably couldn't

see how close I was to the batter. Right.

You know, so,

because my sight is compromised,

I have a, you know,

and highly attuned to,

you know, kind of sound.

And so that sound is something

that I really wanted to perfect.

And so I came in to Georgia Tech

as a physics major.

I mean, you go to the football games

and they're singing,

you know, I'm a ramblin right from,

you know, Georgia Tech

and a hell of an engineer.

Like, they're not saying I'm

a hell of a physicist

or I'm a hell of a,

you know, an acoustic designer, right?

You know, they're saying engineer.

And so for me, I was like, okay,

where do I find myself to fit in?

Like, I, I enjoy the problem

solving, right?

I didn't realize how much I like

building.

I probably would have ended up

a mechanical engineer, honestly.

But I really did enjoy the problem

solving and I enjoy being around people.

I can't not be around people, right?

Even if I'm not,

kind of always articulating my thoughts,

you know, kind of eloquently,

I love the, you know, the,

community feel.

And that was industrial

engineering, right?

So when I looked at it,

I chose my freshman year

to be an industrial engineer,

and I didn't understand

what industrial engineers

did until my senior year,

which was a problem. Right.

And so hopefully that's another thing

that we can get into, because I think,

I'm sure it's changed over the years,

but there was a chasm

between my selection

of industrial engineering

and finally, Don Ratliff

coming into my class and saying, here's

what we're doing, here's

a problem that we're solving,

you know,

and so that was the thing

that really led me to loving

industrial engineering was Don Ratliff

coming into my classroom and saying, hey,

we're solving this Olympic

transportation problem.

And, you know, the visualization

that they brought before

MapQuest or anything else

was something

that was super appealing to me.

Again, loving content

because I saw the visual data

visualization as content.

Well, go ahead and tell us about that.

Don Ratliff, I think you've said

is your mentor.

So how did he kind

of introduce you to this,

and how did he introduce you

to the your love

of industrial engineering?

Let me think what year it was.

I'll say 92

because that's when I graduated,

but let's call it 91

because I was a senior.

So in that 1991,

Atlanta had been awarded the Olympics

and they were planning.

Right.

And so Don Ratliff comes in

and says, hey, here is, a manifestation,

I guess, with a senior seminar,

I don't know what class it was.

You know, but but,

let's call it a senior seminar.

Here's a manifestation

of all the stuff

that you've been learning for for years.

In my case, five years. Right.

You've been learning this stuff for,

this time. Here's how to apply it.

It was this map of saying, here's

the problem we need.

We have all these Olympic venues,

and we're not even talking

about the people moving.

We're not talking about the athletes.

We're just talking

about getting the trash from the venues.

Because otherwise

we're going to have

New York style problems with rodents.

Right?

You know, so

how do we move this stuff

from point A to point B?

And again, you can talk about it.

But seeing it was different for me,

it was oh like wow.

And then you see the,

you know, the nodes and

arcs getting larger with the volume.

And that to me was revolutionary again

before MapQuest existed.

And so for me,

that was a way of telling a story

without having to say a word.

A picture

is worth a thousand words, right?

And when you're talking about operating

in a, consulting realm, you know,

people's, their salaries are very,

very high.

The rates are even higher. Right?

So you're only getting a fraction

of what they're charging for your time.

But, you know, imagine

spending all this time

and money to solve a problem.

And the person

that you're talking to doesn't

even really understand

the solution to the problem. Right?

So when I saw that, I was like,

wait a minute, there's something here.

And that kind of opened my eyes.

And I went to work for

for Don at Caps logistics.

And I've always taken that analysis

and using visualization

as the key for successful communication.

You know, henceforth and forevermore.

Right.

So that's really

what attracted me

and made me fall in love

with industrial engineering.

So you are a patent holder,

for emotion based experience feedback.

Would you mind just briefly

explaining what that is

and how it's used?

Yeah.

So,

this is this goes

to the power of observation.

You know, one of the other points,

I think is really, really important,

you know, so, Lincoln and his book,

wasn't his book, but in his career

used to be

known for getting out on the battlefield

and walking around. Right.

And that philosophy

of management, management

by walking around

is something that I ascribe to.

And so for me,

I was sitting there with one of the,

the quality engineers for me.

I'm sitting there

debugging this experience.

It was called Raising a Ruckus.

It was, an idea

that Steven Spielberg came up with,

and we hired Nicole Perlman to write.

And, you know,

within this experience,

your path is really based on your,

where you're looking at a certain point

in time in the story. Right?

So that's what

that was, the manifestation.

But the way I got there was we're sitting

and watching this experience.

And what would happen in VR

is if you have the debugging screen,

you would see x, y, and z coordinates

as someone is looking around. Right.

So you can see

exactly what they're doing.

And my thought it was almost like,

and I don't know,

it's probably overstating it a bit,

but remember,

it was a Beautiful Mind

and Russell Crowe's character

and they start showing all these charts

and graphs and the arrows

and how they're connected.

That's what happened in that moment

for me. Right?

It wasn't that black and white,

but it was like, oh, wait a minute.

So you're saying that these x, Y

and z coordinates really are reading the

through the gyroscopic?

Mechanism on the headset?

They're telling me where I am in space,

and if they're telling me

where I am in space,

or telling me where I was,

where I was and where I'm going,

and there's an acceleration

and a velocity

to this, you know, kind of, this movement

and if I'm shaking my head

that is directly translatable

into my agreement is translatable

into an emotion of,

yes, I agree with you,

as opposed to shaking my head. Right.

You know, so when I saw that,

saw the x, y, z coordinates to me,

I was like, wait a minute,

I can take someone's emotion

at that point in time

and I can interpret

what they're

what they're thinking, right.

If they're agreeing.

And I use a bit of a morbid, example,

there's a scene in,

I think it's called

American History X, you know,

Ed Norton's character plays,

you know, kind of a racist

and a black man

comes into his neighborhood

and there's a scene in there.

It's very graphic.

But, you know, my belief

is that most

people would be repulsed

by this kind of

what happens in that scene.

But there's a segment of the population

that would take that

and actually deride, you know,

it's as, perverse as that is.

And in that moment,

you can tell what they're thinking.

You can tell who that person is

based in their emotion

based on these x, y, and z coordinates.

You know, the,

the delta from time to time.

And so that's what

the pattern is based on.

And so,

the pattern basically says

I can not only interpret that,

but then I can feed you

more of what you're interested in

based on your,

your emotion in that moment.

That's amazing.

So I mean, it becomes

more and more capable of like,

making the user

experience basically more personalized

based on feeling

and how they're reacting to something.

And I read a lot of,

you know, choose your own adventure

books, right?

You know, when I was growing up that

that was anytime you come around

with the Scholastic book list, right.

That's what I bought,

you know, The Lion,

the witch and the wardrobe and,

you know, kind of, Encyclopedia Brown

and those choose

your own adventure books.

So there's a lot of potential with,

with that kind of thing.

The, the,

you know, making the,

the user experience

more and more personalized.

Do you have any concerns about that?

Well, I, I didn't,

but then I went to I have

and I won’t name the company.

Yeah, I wont name the company,

very big Silicon Valley social network.

But, you know,

I went in

and I said, hey,

we'd love to partner with you on this.

And he said, we can't touch that

with a ten foot pole. Right.

And so at that moment in time,

I was like, oh, wait a minute.

Okay, I understand

because if someone

if you have

this entire, population of the world

that's on your social,

you know, kind of platform

and you can tell what they're

thinking in the moment,

that might be a problem. Right?

So I do see the problems in that.

And again, it's one

it's it's

kind of like AI in the wrong hands.

It can be used for various purposes.

But I do see the benefits,

especially as relates to entertainment.

Right.

You know,

it's like let me again, algorithmically

give you more of

what is going to connect you

to this story,

and this character based on, you know,

kind of what the,

what the possibilities are right

for this narrative arc.

The, the AI and the VR getting big

and entertainment, obviously,

but it's also getting big

everywhere else.

You know, in education

and hospitals, it's,

you know, it's everywhere.

So everyone's getting excited about it,

but you've got excitement

and then you've got the actual

implementation of it.

There are two very different things.

How do you think that ISEs

can be most valuable

when organizations are moving forward

with implementing this new technology.

So, I'll say simulation,

and it's one of my favorite tools.

I probably overuse it to a large degree,

but if you can,

ascribe a path and,

be able to kind of model

what the future might look like,

you know, kind of in each scenario,

I think it helps people, you know,

kind of understand.

So like, and again,

I, I put a number against everything.

I drove my wife nuts

when we were looking at schools

for my kids

because I'm like, you know,

here, here are the factors

that we're going to consider.

And I put a number

against every single thing.

And so I think in the similar

vein, understanding

what is the likelihood of someone

adopting AI technology and,

you know, understanding it, what are the,

possible paths of, both our use and our,

you know, ability

to master the technology versus

these are the, the competitors

and what their,

possibilities of mastering this are.

Right.

So for me,

everything comes down

to a spreadsheet model.

Even in,

even in AI,

I feed my spreadsheets to AI

and ask it to interpret it. Right.

And then I tell it why it's wrong.

But I think that's really

if you have that level

of thinking and say, I understand

kind of what

the again,

the objective function is for, for a CEO,

for a department

head, for a company, you understand, and

again, that's another,

conversation because

sometimes the stated problem

isn't the real problem. Right.

But if you understand

what the real problem

is for the organization,

and then you can,

you can actually analyze that problem.

I think, you know, that

that helps make AI stronger,

because I is really good at repetitive

tasks and analysis

and it's not as good

at rational thinking.

It will it will become bad.

But, you know, it's

that's what we have, right?

We we understand

what the human costs are.

We understand what, stories resonate.

We understand how it's going to be taken

when, you know,

one of my friends

reminded me that when I was a senior or,

you know,

working on my master's at Georgia Tech,

we were part of a facility

rationalization study

as it related to closing schools.

You know,

and now I think about as a parent,

and I look at that totally differently

because the emotional connection

to your local school is so high.

We knew there was going to be conflict,

but I didn't understand the nature of it.

Right.

But that's what we understand.

As opposed to you telling AI,

hey, we need to close the school.

Which one should I close?

And you know. Yeah.

And they're like, oh, well,

the parents are going to be upset.

Well, you don't understand that

this neighborhood has a history of that.

Their school has been taken three times.

And so they're going to come out

with the pitchforks and,

you know, the torches. Right?

So all of those things are

things that we can,

you know, kind of

bring to the table,

even if we're benefiting from AI.

How do you deal with that?

Because you said you're

you're very much a people person,

but then you're very much tech and AI.

So you do have two worlds collide.

Quite a bit.

So I mean, do you ever find that that,

that exact problem,

how do you deal with that exact problem

in your in your work today?

Because you must run

into that quite frequently.

Yeah. Just yesterday.

So I'm

I've started a

new company with, you know, well known,

you know, I'll say my age, right.

Mid 50s hip hop group. Right.

That's been around for five,

but been in music for five decades now.

Right.

So total of, you know, almost 40 years.

And I'm trying to use AI to move

the creative process along

and saying, hey, I heard your idea.

Here is a comp of what I understood

your idea to be right.

And I can do that in two minutes.

I can do it in two minutes.

And I can,

put it in front of you

and you can respond.

And the response to me was, well,

I don't think like that.

I need to be able

to talk through something.

I need to be able to,

you know,

kind of not

have my ideas tainted by

what a computer is saying it,

you know, kind of it is.

And I'm trying to understand, explain.

Like,

this is no different

than the creative process right now.

This is a comp.

The designer is going to do

the exactly the same thing.

So let's cut

three weeks out of the process

while you explain.

Try to get him on the phone.

The emails are bouncing back and forth.

You know,

you have to get

the updated communication.

He's on vacation.

Like, let's

go three weeks out,

a process in here in two minutes

is something for you to respond to.

It just didn't resonate right.

And so for me it is

it's a it's an understanding.

That's why I said

solving the real problem

and understanding

getting behind the emotion.

Because most if you were a consultant,

the problem that they tell you

is that they

want to optimize income, right?

You know,

they want to be

the most profitable company.

That's not what it's about,

but it's about the legacy of the CEO.

And, you know, at that level,

most of the time, it's like,

I want something

that people can remember me by.

So if I have to make a change in order

for that to happen,

right,

we'll see what happens with Tim Cook.

Great.

I think most people,

you know,

industrial engineer,

you know, great leader

for all intents and purposes.

But what is he going to be known for?

Is that will there be a leap from,

you know,

from jobs to

and I don't even know

the name of the next CEO.

I should be ashamed of myself.

But, you know,

I think really understanding

what problem you're solving

and making sure that,

your solution talks to that problem,

right?

You know, so really,

what happened is the person

didn't want to be accosted by me

for being a procrastinator.

That's that's really what I was saying.

Like, you're taking way too long

because I

saw you come up with a design for,

you know, one of these products in a day.

So let's just cut out

the three weeks that led up to this

and, you know, do that.

But that's not

you have to kind of really

confront people

and meet them where they are.

And so,

developing, you know, right

now, communication, framework for using

and this is something I developed

many years ago,

but using graphical representations

of a current status

and letting that articulate,

we're going to miss an opportunity

or we're going to be behind,

and that's going to cost us

X amount of dollars. Right.

And you don't have to hurt anyone's

feelings in doing that.

But if they see it,

they can respond to it

and if everyone else sees it.

So I'm a big fan of dashboards

and publicly displayed dashboards.

When I used to walk into,

you know,

Epic Games,

they had a big dashboard

of who was playing Fortnite at any

given, you know,

kind of moment

in every region

of the world and up

times and average time, you know, spent

and you know how long

the campaign lasts,

all these really incredible data,

radical visibility

is something that's

and transparency is something

that's super valuable, right?

Everyone's not prepared for that.

But again,

it's it's really for me

as an industrial engineer

working with creatives,

how do I tell them that

they're taking a long time

without offending them?

It's not easy, right?

You know, so

I could say, hey,

we need to get this creative done

as quickly as possible.

And then they're going to say, well,

the creative is not going to be as good

if I don't have as much time.

And I, I call B.S. on that.

It's really about the pressure.

So you can

you can kind of take three weeks and,

you know, jam

everything into that last day

and turn everything around

in that last day or but,

you know,

front load that, that last day

to at the beginning of the process.

Right.

So there was a book called The Goal.

I'm sorry, I'm

rambling on a bit here,

but there was a book called The Goal

that talked about front loading the,

you know, kind of,

the most constrained process

to the front of the process

because there's a problem

with destroying work in process goods.

Right. And that's no good for anybody.

So front load that process.

And so that's what I'm trying to do.

Let's front load the creative process.

Let me handle the manufacturing,

the sourcing and the marketing

once we do that creative.

But let's get it

to the front of the process.

So let's let's not waste three weeks.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Kind of. It's own.

It's kind of its own specialty. There

it is. You know.

But that's a world that I live

in, you know, for better or for worse.

I think that's kind of the whole

entrepreneurship world,

as you kind of

have to

be a little bit of expert at everything.

Yeah, I would say so.

Jack of all trades, master of none.

Right.

So I was wondering,

just talking about entrepreneurship now.

So with AI being sort

of a database of basically everything

that's ever come before,

do you find that

it's getting harder for people

to come up with new and original ideas?

So before I came along,

I always used to say, there's

nothing new under the sun, right?

So I think really the important thing,

assuming everything's been discovered

in some form or fashion. Right?

They're they're now looking at AI

and the way I saw problems.

And it's very much like the human brain,

you know, interestingly enough.

Right.

You know, so,

and no one told it

to be like the human brain.

They're just training it.

And again,

and it's training itself

and it's thinking,

okay, I made this mistake.

You know, I can't do that.

And you can see it now.

And, you know, these algorithms

and it's telling you how it's thinking.

And again, it's it's

it's probably not entirely

accurate,

but it's trying to communicate to you

what process it's undergoing.

And so I think, it's not getting harder,

but it is I think it's getting faster.

And so let's, let's assume

that the number of new ideas are the same

no matter what.

The density is,

you know, kind of decreasing.

And so you're getting

all the ideas up front.

Now, what everyone is counting on

is that leads to revolutions

and new, even ideas

that we hadn't thought about.

And maybe we're getting to it

more quickly. But I would say that,

the density of ideas is, is much greater.

You kind of now.

So I guess, by definition,

you know, over time, fewer ideas.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Everybody's on

kind of a different learning

learning curve

with AI in this new technology.

But what do you think that,

ISEs should be learning right now

for the future of new technology

to be prepared?

The best thing for me again,

and this goes back

to some of the challenges

I've talked about before,

is just communication.

And so I think,

for me, it is the iteration through,

the solving of a problem.

And, you know, again, I,

I've been in the classroom

in many years, but,

you know, I'm

vaguely familiar with the

with the problems that are being solved.

And so I think,

if you can work through a problem

by engaging in a conversation,

an ongoing dialog with, a model,

when you get into the real world,

you're going to have

that much more practice in engaging with,

you know,

kind of someone in the real world.

And so I think it's it's really

just the iteration,

using that, model, those models

to solve a problem

that is relevant to

whatever, field

you choose to be in health systems,

you know, kind of decision

support systems, whatever it is.

But, you know,

just engaging in the dialog

and the thought

because then you're going

to get to the answer faster.

And again, to your point,

you said it's a very,

very specific problem, right?

It's my life. Right.

So if I can solve

those problems more quickly,

you know, than I am Ted

Turner in a lot of ways, right?

You know,

and if I don't, then, you know, kind of.

I'm some guy

that had an idea that you've never,

you know, kind of heard of. Right.

And so I think that

it's almost like the proliferation

of cable television,

you know, to go back to the Turner

analogy is I watch an internal model,

I watch three shows basically,

you know, pardon the interruption.

I watch Antiques Roadshow

and I watch, you know, kind of,

you know, whatever's on HGTV

at the time, right?

Not not a lot of television.

I watch it, but,

you know, I was paying for hundreds

of, shows when I had cable.

Right now I'm paying for just a few.

So I think similarly,

there are problems

that people need to solve

that are broad,

and then there are problems

that are super specific based on,

geography, based on the demographics,

based on psychographics,

based on histories of organizations.

And so

if you can iterate

through those problems,

you can solve a very,

very specific problem that isn't a,

you know, one size fits all.

I'm a hammer.

Therefore every problem is a nail, right?

You know, so

and I know this

because I watch a lot of HGTV

and I have like seven different types

of hammers.

Right? I didn't know that in high school.

I had no idea.

But I literally have seven,

at least seven

different types of hammers.

And so I think that's the analogy

that I would use right now.

You're you're a hammer,

but you're solving

a very specific problem, right?

I don't need to pull the nails

out of the floor,

so I don't need to call right

on my hammer,

you know,

or, you know, hey,

I have a rubber mallet

because I need a hammer.

You know, kind of this

this hardwood,

this engineered hardwood, and,

you know, together.

So I'm going to use a rubber mallet.

And I would say that

that's the analogy

for industrial engineers right now.

You don't have to solve

everyone's problem.

Solve this problem

very, very well and you'll be rewarded.

That's good advice.

I want to

transition a little bit

to a little bit more in-depth

into your entrepreneurship journey

and into your leadership style,

if you don't mind.

I was, I was stalking your LinkedIn page

and I noticed that you still have Paper

Boy listed

as one of your job positions from 1981.

Why?

Because it allows me to talk

about the way that I approached

being the Paper Boy.

Right.

You know,

so I live in,

grew up in a place called Penn Hills.

Right. And as the name would suggest.

So Penn

Hills was a,

people that went to my high school

that people are know. Right?

You know, George

Karl went to my high school.

Aaron Donald went to my high school.

And the predator,

the actor that played the predator.

And then I'm like fourth

on the list of most famous. I'm.

I'm exaggerating, but, you know, like,

it's not a big school, but,

you know, kind of,

very interesting place,

been written about a lot.

No sidewalks in my my neighborhood.

Right.

So I'm a paper boy

with these hills,

steep hills, 30% grade hills.

And I don't know that

I didn't measure it, but,

you know, it's a pretty steep hills,

delivering papers.

And so

the way that I approached it,

I really didn't know

I was doing it,

but route optimization

was something that I was doing

kind of very,

very early on

because it's like, how do I get home,

get all the papers

to the guy to deliver the paper,

His name was Mike Vento, right.

Mike would drop the papers off.

I would spend the time to wrap them in

rubber bands

so I could throw them,

go on the optimal route

and over time, it.

Right, you know, so there's a,

you know, kind of a study around that.

Our time it

because I needed to make it

the baseball practice

you know in the summer. Right.

And if I didn't

I wouldn't make it to baseball practice.

So that was one thing I was like,

you know, the route optimization

and the other industrial

engineering aspects.

The other element was

I had at the end one paper route,

but actually what I did was I wrote up

three different paper routes

because, you know, someone would,

you know, graduate.

They're like, hey,

you want this paper route? Sure.

You know, so I had,

it was a pretty big paper

route, especially

for going up all those hills.

And I had a little red wagon and,

you know, kind of Lisa rider wagon

with no brakes down the hill was crazy.

Like, I'm looking at it right now.

I'm like,

how did I make it to 57 years old?

Like, it doesn't make any sense

that I'm here

because of the danger I put myself in.

But that's

it just gives me a chance

to talk about it.

You know, talk.

It lets me talk about,

you know, one of the things

I'm, I hold dear

is that, you know, being from Pittsburgh.

So everything like

when I was working at Bad Boy,

they call me the Efficiency Pittsburgh

because I was always

talking about Pittsburgh.

This was before Wiz Khalifa

and, you know, kind of anybody else.

But I'm

very proud of being from Pittsburgh.

And so I delivered the Pittsburgh

Press in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

So again, it's

that it's

the content that allows me

to communicate my background

in a way that is comfortable to me.

So that's awesome.

You've also been incredibly intentional

about creating pathways

for African-American entrepreneurs

and underrepresented talent.

From your perspective,

what kind of support

makes the most difference

to young entrepreneurs? Is it mentorship?

Is it networking? Is it capital?

What do you think it is?

I would love to say it with capital,

and I think a lot of people

this goes back to the like,

what problem are you solving right now?

Dave Chappelle did a brilliant job,

brilliant, brilliant job of

of kind of articulating

what happens when you get capital

and you don't have the,

you kind of the background

for how to apply that capital. Right?

You know,

so the richest man in the world

was somebody who was playing dice

and, you know, kind of

took everyone else's money.

Big bang, take little Bank, right.

You know, so

and that's, you know, kind of was a skit.

But I think as it relates to,

you know, kind of

how do you,

you know, what's most important?

It really depends on the stage. Right?

So it's really,

really important

for people to understand

what the environment is. Right?

We have a challenge

as African Americans, as women,

because when you go to Silicon Valley

and you pitch, you don't look like them.

They can't relate to your background

at all. Right.

So, the people that invested in me

have been

I mean, they have like

there have been a handful,

but they've been

a Taiwanese investor

invested in a previous company,

a Chinese investor,

investors in the previous company,

a South Asian investor.

But my most recent company, you know,

wrote the check. And so,

understanding what the

environment that you're operating in

and you're not playing by the same rules,

you're not playing,

you can't play the same rules

that someone

would articulate in a, typical,

you know, kind of venture capital pitch.

Right?

And there's a guy named Michael Seibel

who is,

at Y Combinator and, you know, kind of

did Justin.tv and social cam,

great entrepreneur.

You know, Twitch.

Brilliant.

He's one of the few that

thrived in that environment.

But even he,

I think recognizes you know, like he,

he, succeeded

because he played the game

slightly differently, right?

You know,

so he had the relationships

that allowed him to go into those,

those rooms.

And Justin and, you know, kind of,

with Justin.tv etc..

So, education

and understanding

that the rules of engagement, you

know, and people don't like that

because they think that there should be

one set of rules.

There aren't

there's not one set of rules. Right?

If you don't understand the rules

and how they apply to you,

you're going to fail

almost, you know, 100% of the time.

And then,

letting people understand

because I got very frustrated,

you know,

when I was running Valence,

you know,

there was one,

I'm not going to call it

the name of the company,

but one company

that had a $750

million valuation, everyone

celebrating them.

And then the after

they raised the money for the last round,

the guy goes on and he's doing these,

you know, this roadshow

or all this press.

And he has an iced out Rolex, right?

He has a Rolex watch with diamonds.

In the face of it.

You haven't earned that money yet, right?

You know,

your company might be worth

a certain amount.

That's not liquid.

It's you haven't exited. Right.

And so

and that sends a message

to people that, you know, you

the money

that they trusted to you to invest,

to grow your company.

And again, whether that's

even if that's how you spend your money,

even if that's how you spend your money,

that's good.

But if you can't be an ostentatious,

you know, kind of display of that,

that capital.

So I'm going down this rabbit hole

for a very specific purpose,

because you have to take people

where they are.

If you're talking to someone,

like Robert Smith,

who has you know, as an entrepreneur,

chemical engineer,

you know, but but has succeeded.

He can do whatever he wants to.

He walks on water.

But you're not Robert F Smith, right?

Yeah, I'm not Robert F Smith.

And so letting people understand

the process, to getting to have an exit

and then being a repeat entrepreneur

and then being able

to set your terms for your valuation

and who you're taking money from

if there's a process. Right.

You know, so,

Hewlett Packard went through it

many, many decades.

And then being who they are,

the Silicon Valley

and we're Silicon Valley is located.

People started looking like them.

And that's, you know,

venture capitalists are attracted

that because they know it's familiar

high level pattern recognition.

Someone like me

walk in the door

like like me walks in the door

with hip hop and,

you know, wearing a jean jacket

or whatever.

It's a different, model

that they're not familiar with.

And so for me,

the education starts with it's

not the capital necessarily, it's

the process that leads to the capital.

And then what

you do with the capital, right.

So there's a it's an, evolution,

an iteration on a thing.

Interesting.

I read in a

previous, interview that you did.

I don't remember which one.

But you said that what inspires you most

is dealing with young entrepreneurs

who have not become jaded yet.

So is that still what inspires you and

how do entrepreneurs

keep from becoming jaded?

You know, I think that,

again, knowing the rules of the game

will keep you from being jaded

because they're not fair.

They're not the same.

You can't expect the same results

by following a playbook

that wasn't written for you.

And so, you know,

I think if you're thinking

that it's going to be easy

and people told me like,

I shouldn't take venture capital,

you know, kind of

because that game wasn't

created with me in mind. Right.

And I think that's

that's silly

because in your you're fighting with one

hand tied behind your back

because it's really hard to grow

if you can't scale.

And you need cap

generally need capital on the scale.

You might not need a lot of capital

like this

check that I took for

my current venture is relatively small.

But what I can do is prove

and then I can, you know, kind of,

get more capital

because this, venture firm

that invested in me also backed

these three recent unicorn decker

corn companies, right?

You know, and publicly traded companies.

You know,

then I have more evidence to say,

okay, yes, I'm worthy of being back.

But, you know,

the jaded comes

from thinking

that you understand the game

and you really don't understand the game.

It's unfair,

but there have been people

that have been successful, right.

And there,

a lot of times

lie under the radar

because they're not the most high

profile, ostentatious, an entrepreneur.

There are people that have,

you know, kind of gotten and exited,

you know,

the names

that people, can, can write off

aren't

the ones that have been most successful.

I mean, roll off,

you know, the roll off the tongue.

And so,

letting people know,

hey, here's

an example of someone

who is ultra successful

and you've never heard of.

And so that's really, you know, kind of

what is important to me

because again, pattern recognition,

one of the other patterns

that I had in process.

And you know, when I left valence, we,

let it be was really identifying a,

yeah, I'll say professional fingerprint,

like a professional DNA,

saying I like these things.

Here's how I approach people.

Here's how I,

you know,

my leadership style

and here's someone

who has been successful,

with a very similar background. Right.

So for me, luckily, I know that person.

His name is Rodney Atkins right now.

So Rodney

is, you know, kind of

on the board of PayPal

and Granger and UPS and,

you know, chairman of Avnet

and a whole bunch of other things.

He happens to be

one of the founders of the chapter

that my fraternity at Georgia Tech.

And so I was able to see that very,

very early on.

But most people don't have that role

model, right?

That mentor that

and not even mentor, right,

that, that,

example of something,

a blueprint that they can follow.

And so for me,

that's one of the things is like,

you know,

the entrepreneurial journey

is not the same thing

for someone coming from

the South as it is

for someone in the North.

It's not the same thing for someone

going to school in Boston

as it is in Silicon Valley or Atlanta.

It's different.

And so understanding

the specific circumstance.

And again, here's where I comes in.

Because if you feed all those data

into the AI model, it can tell you okay.

Yeah I see what you're doing.

Yes.

Here are some examples

of what you might be able to do.

Because,

you know,

the Georgia Tech has has produced

this amount of,

you know,

small fraction of the billionaires

that, that, you know, MIT does.

But the ones that have

come out of Georgia Tech, here's

what they've done. Right.

And so, just like,

I say, these things are lemmings

in a lot of ways.

They follow the patterns.

You know,

entrepreneurs should follow the patterns,

but the pattern should be very tailored

specifically to your circumstance,

your passion,

your background,

your education, etc., etc..

That's great advice.

Is there

maybe a failure

of yours that you can share with us

that you learned something from?

You know,

I would say the biggest failure.

And I prepared myself

because, you know,

I'm on the

board of a publicly traded company,

and I've had, you know,

several conversations

and, you know, that's a common question.

I would say that

I always, like, look inwardly

right and say,

I didn't in valence

and in particular, right.

I didn't pivot quickly enough

when I saw

the things that were happening.

We were the canary in the coal mine

for the, retreat from the I,

you know,

because we saw corporations

that had pledged and, you know, like, I'm

not going to name

the names of the companies, but,

you know,

the ones that still have a Dei group

are the companies that, you know, we were

we were having conversation with those.

And then there are a lot that,

you know,

kind of stood up and,

you know, kind of be purchased

and said, you know,

we want to get behind this effort

and they're nowhere to be found.

Matter of fact,

they were the first to retreat

when the, the administration

changed, right? You know, so,

when we were the canary in the coal mine,

I saw that happening and didn't respond

quickly enough.

And I would say that,

the other thing I learned

is that people are human, right?

You know,

so the reason why

I didn't respond quickly enough

is because I thought I had more time,

because my investor told me,

hey, things are changing.

You know, I'm going to give you.

write you one more check

and then you're going to be on your own,

you know, they you know.

So that was in November

and then January came

and they're like, yeah,

we can't write you that check.

So it was like,

so I didn't pivot quickly enough.

And I believe what someone said to me

and I cast the check in my mind

before what money was in the bank. Right.

Never again will that happen, right?

I'm preparing for, catastrophe

and a phenomenal success every day.

Right.

So you talk about control limits, right?

You know, and,

you know, in industrial engineering,

I don't want anything out of those can,

you know, outside those control limits,

even though I'm really gearing toward,

you know, phenomenal success at busting

through that upper control limit.

But in no circumstance

am I ever going to fall

through the bottom right.

So that's the way I look at things.

Yeah.

Would you share

one of the highlights of your career?

Like a big success,

where you just looked around

and you're like, wow, this is awesome.

So when we were doing,

at the

virtual reality company,

we did Jurassic World VR expedition.

And, you know, we put it out,

you know,

took a long time and, you know, like,

it was a lot of, late nights again,

you know, testing, right?

You know, beta testing, the software

and user acceptance testing, etc., etc..

But because it was successful,

two things happened.

One, we put it out

and then,

Dave and Busters,

who was our partner on that,

first of all, was able to write.

We were able to write $1 million check

to universal for the licensing. Right.

We were able to write that check.

No one else had ever done that before.

It was always a small game.

So we were able to write

a seven figure check

to this major studio

for the use of their IP,

and I was very proud of that.

So that was great.

We became successful enough

that when Dave and Busters announced,

and I don't know, the numbers,

I've written this down somewhere,

but when they announced

that they were doing Jurassic World VR,

traditional stock jumped up.

I want to say over 20%. Right.

It was

it was remarkable

how, you know,

kind of under stock went up.

But then what was really,

really cool to me

was because of the success of that,

we were being called on by other,

you know, studios.

And I remember

going out to the Warner

Brothers lot

and reading the script for Dunkirk,

and going into Christopher Nolan's office

and sitting down, not at his desk.

I wouldn't be that disrespectful,

but sitting down and reading Dunkirk.

And being in Christopher Nolan's office

and seeing the Steelers helmet.

But it wasn't the Steelers helmet,

but it was a helmet from,

Batman, the Batman movie

that was filmed in Pittsburgh

that was signed by,

you know, kind of a lot of the Pittsburgh

Steelers, Hines

Ward, and,

you know, Ben Roethlisberger

and, you know, kind of a Hall of Fame

caliber talent.

And, you know, for someone who grew up

watching Franco

Harris and Mean

Joe Green and Jack Lambert and Jack

Ham and Donnie Shell and all these guys.

So, you know,

it was really, really remarkable

to be in that situation

of dealing with technology and content

and the presence,

you know, the spirit of these,

Steelers legends. Right?

So and Christopher Nolan,

you know, it was brilliant.

And and it's funny

because you said,

my LinkedIn page,

I was actually going to write about

this was going to be my post

of the week once,

you know, the Odyssey came out,

you know, but yeah, that

that was a highlight.

You know, those kind of three activities,

you know, again, it's

not a monetary highlight.

It's not,

you know, I have patents, right?

You know, that the,

that that was that was great.

You know, it's great to,

you know,

kind of have the patent on the wall

in my mother's office, right?

You know,

and my brother worked on it, too.

So both of our names are on this patent.

That's great.

But, you know, kind of

sitting in Christopher Nolan's office,

I was like,

you know, kind of a I made it moment,

you know, in that regard. Right.

Well, speaking of that, I mean,

in your career, you've spent

you've spent a good time

in a lot of spaces

where there is like a lot of influence

and power and money.

And I was just thinking

that takes a great deal of confidence.

So where does your confidence come from?

Let's see,

I've mentioned Penn Hills,

you know,

grew up in a and again, there's

one of two ways

you go in that environment.

It's like a cauldron.

But, you know,

I rode the school bus every day,

and it was not a, warm

and welcoming place.

I grew up.

My mother has ten brothers and sisters.

You know, again, another cauldron.

But I would say that

my confidence came from my mother

and my father

spending a lot of time with me

when I was younger.

And developing my strengths.

And so I never really thought

about my weaknesses, which,

you know, in some regards as great,

but I always thought about my strengths.

I always knew what I was capable of

because I started reading when I was two

and I was, you know,

I was on the all star team,

even though the,

coach's son also played on the team.

Right.

He was like, yeah, well,

we're going to put him in this game,

but you're going to go to the Oakmont

tournament.

You know,

Oakmont is where they played the U.S.

open, right?

So you're going to go to the Oakmont

tournament

and you're going to be on the team.

And so I always kind of,

was treated in a special manner,

but I never really tried to

articulate that.

I don't like talking about myself

just to be honest. Right.

You know,

you ask me here,

and I realize it's

a branding opportunity.

And I get to impart some knowledge

that I don't really like

to talk about myself. Right.

I don't,

you know, it's

just not comfortable to me.

But the confidence comes

from being in a place where,

knowing what your strengths are

and really embracing your strengths

and not having people tell you

what your weaknesses are.

Right?

I, I'm

still I'm still struggling to figure out

how do I overcome

some of the things that I'm like,

oh, wait a minute,

I shouldn't be doing that right.

You know?

So, but.

Let me say this right.

And I'm going to

please forget

we have the question that you asked me

about, you know, kind of my, confidence.

But what I've realized

is that great

people have a lot of shortcomings, right?

Literally.

And, you know, like,

if you look at some of the best actors,

they're, they're overcoming something,

right? My friend,

I have a very close friend,

you know, business school, probably.

It was the first billionaire

in our class, right?

He had to overcome some things.

He was an independent miner.

Was 16 years old. Right.

Emancipated minor, I should say.

You look at DJ Jazzy Jeff. I was a

DJ, when I was in high school

and college

and the reason why DJ Jazzy Jeff

And it's funny

because Grandmaster Flash tells

almost identical story.

Grandmaster flash

says he was afraid of girls,

so he used to kind of,

he was a DJ to kind of overcome

that fear.

Jeff's mother

wouldn't let him off the stoop.

So when everybody else was out playing,

you know, in my case,

wiffle ball,

stickball, whatever in Philly basketball,

he wouldn't be allowed off the stoop.

So he was down

in the basement practicing. Right.

And so these, you know,

and again, Elon Musk,

there's you can't tell me

that Elon Musk doesn't

have some neurodiversity,

you know, kind of challenges.

Right?

But, you know, in a lot of

ways, he's brilliant.

You know, you can go

go down the list there,

all these things that, you know,

kind of people overcome.

And so,

I think that's where greatness comes

from, is that crucible

of having to overcome something and then,

hyper focus on what you're really,

really good at.

And again,

when we were doing balance in our,

we call it a bonds program.

That's what we focused on.

Most programs talk about, you know,

how do you overcome

your lack of communication?

Well, you know, maybe you don't.

Maybe you kind of just focus on creating

and being Doctor Dre.

Doctor Dre is one of the,

you know, most prolific,

you know, producers in the history of,

hip hop,

you know, especially, but,

you know, music in general.

But, you know, when he puts out one

album every ten years,

you know, so, you know,

let's not try to make Doctor Dre fast.

He's brilliant and doing what he did.

Right.

So, you know, just,

you know,

not trying to overcome your challenges,

but focusing on your strengths,

is where the confidence came from for me.

Yeah, well, I want to bring it to back

to industrial engineering

just for one second.

Do you have some advice out there for,

industrial engineers who maybe, like,

you don't want to focus

on a traditional career path,

but they want to do something different,

like you've done

either on in entrepreneurship

or going to entertainment

or something like that.

Do you have some advice

that you can pass on to them?

Yeah, so so I remember

being in business school

and one of my professors,

his name was Carl Sloan. You know, his,

you know,

he was a

well respected consultant, right?

You know, one of these kind of top tier,

you know, at AT Kearney,

you know, McKinsey level consultants.

He was, you know, really,

really brilliant guy.

And he said,

follow the passion

and the money will come. Right.

And you've heard that?

I've heard it before.

I don't know if I necessarily believe

that anymore,

but what I do believe is that if you use

your passion

in which are really good at

and apply it to the field

that you're going into,

then you'll stand out, right?

Because I came out to California

and to Hollywood

because I, you know, and again,

I was proven my

my hypothesis wasn't right,

but it was more right than wrong,

which is if I

if I'm an engineer

and I have a business degree

and I, go into this creative field,

I can,

innovate in a way

that most people aren't thinking about

because all they want to do is,

sit on Sunset Plaza and write a script.

Right.

Or they want to market something.

And so,

you know,

I'm thinking of,

things in a different way.

And this was born out.

I remember doing a consulting,

project with, with NPR.

We were working on the program

pricing strategy.

And this is where

the kind of light bulb went off

even before business school.

But I'm sitting up there

doing the analysis that I know

to do as an industrial engineer, right.

The spreadsheet model.

And,

the great thing is that I was also

creatively inclined somewhat.

And so the model

that I put together, again,

it wasn't just a spreadsheet.

What people saw was me

put in a bunch of numbers, but,

that you could tell me, okay, well,

what happens

if you raise the price of Morning Edition

and All Things Considered to this level

and you press the button,

what does that

what happens to this group of stations?

Well, people saw the numbers

changing in real time.

And like,

you would think that

people lost their minds.

Could they never seen it before. Right.

You know, so,

the the application

of industrial engineering principles

to a field that I was interested

in, which was media was,

it allowed me to stand out,

you know, kind of very, very similarly,

you know,

I mentioned the patent

that I have in VR and immersive media,

the most recent example

I did the business plan or,

you know, kind of

worked on the financial model for,

beverage company called Juice Runners.

Juice runners is,

you know, there's a really incredible,

hip hop group, right?

You know,

LP and killer Mike,

you know, Run the Jewels.

And so they have a beverage

called Juice Runners.

So, when they were going out

to raise money,

they they called me

to put together the model.

But I didn't just do a spreadsheet model

that someone would send

to a venture capitalist.

Actually.

I said, well,

what what actually helps convey

the idea that this is a premium cocktail

and it's worthy of an investment.

So I took the, the pro forma model,

and I put the,

the numbers on the back of a,

on the nutrition label

on the back of the can.

It was real. It worked. Right.

So if you change a variable,

the numbers on the back of the

can would change. Right.

And so seeing that visualization

and actually,

connecting the idea of an investment

to a beverage company

and the label on the back of the can,

and this being a worthy investment

all made sense. Right.

And now, hopefully the rest is history.

But, you know, they raise the money,

they're going out and, and,

you know, if not for,

aluminum cans shortage, you know,

there'll be a lot more,

you know, good news.

And hopefully that's coming soon.

But you know, that's you know,

what I would say

is that, again,

I applaud my creativity

and my interest

in solving a problem to a field

which was, you know, interesting.

And using my talents of analysis

as an industrial engineer

or an engineer in general

was the thing that I would,

you know, recommend

for, for anyone,

whatever that field is,

apply your skills of analysis to that

and do it

in a way that is authentic

to who you are.

I just got maybe 1

or 2 more questions left,

if you don't mind. But I'm here.

You also said in another interview that,

you hoped that your kids

and people

that you have mentored in the past,

that you hope

that they will eclipse your success.

So what do you imagine

that will look like?

What do you think

the next generation will look like

when you imagine that success

eclipsing yours?

What do you think

that future is going to be?

So I probably said that

before I understood

who I was as a parent, who my kids were.

Right,

because they're not going

to follow my footsteps.

My son is,

my son would be in the ball pit, right?

You know, I'll say Chucky Cheese.

We never went to Chuck E cheese, but,

you know, you get the visual, right?

Could he be in the ball pit

and people would come up to me

and say, oh, he's going to be a CEO,

right? And,

or we'd be in line.

I remember we're in line at,

I think it was Starbucks in, Malibu.

Right.

And we're line at Starbucks

and my son is talking

and the guy in front of us,

a line turns around is like,

what are you teaching him? Right?

We're not talking.

It's who he is.

But, you know,

so I would have said

my son would be a CEO.

He's not going to be a CEO,

but he may be a senator.

He may be the president

of the United States.

You know,

the thing is that,

it's important for me to be his interests

and allow him to be who he wants

and not who I want him to be. Right.

That's one of the things that,

you know,

we stand as parents on that principle.

My daughter

is, you know, very, very easily.

Could be a, Broadway producer.

She, you know,

she wants to act,

and she likes, you know,

she has this,

shyness about her

that being on stage

kind of helps her overcome.

But she's super.

She's all.

She's been writing

these songs and jingles

since she was five years old,

and she still does it.

And her

her focus on these musicals is maniacal.

Her, you know, she's reading,

you know, she's going into eighth grade

and her reading list.

I'm like, wait a minute.

Like,

you're not supposed

to be reading that stuff

into college, right?

It's it's kind of crazy.

And so the point is,

I don't know what it looks like.

I want to feed their interests

and have them shoot for the stars.

That's really what I aspire to for them.

Yeah.

And so,

what are you working on now and then?

What is next for you? So.

I didn't I think I

alluded to it a bit earlier.

I didn't realize

it was my life

that I have pretty significant ADHD.

You know,

and, you know, again, I the story

I tell is

my brother was a math whiz, right?

My my brother was,

you know,

I think he took AP calculus

in 10th grade.

I'm not sure,

but something to that, you know,

kind of level where he was like,

he won the state competition for,

math counts in Pennsylvania.

And he's like, really,

really, really good at math.

So, my trigonometry teacher, when I was,

I guess I was a senior in high school,

I trigonometry teacher said, to me,

he said, your brother's so smart.

What happened to you?

Right? Know

that?

It's kind of like,

you know, like, you shouldn't

you shouldn't be allowed.

Like you should.

You should have to, you know,

be put in timeout or something

if you're going to

talk to kids like that.

But I realize it's it's universal, right.

You know, so that's kind of how it is.

But I think for me to understand,

you know, kind of ADHD and, you know,

what I need to really focus on

is doing something

creative and different almost every day.

And so for me,

I, I mentioned that problem

communicating with the,

you know,

with, with the creatives in the company,

the other founders of the company.

For me,

that's a challenge

that if I solve it,

I can like, you know, not only,

our company will be,

light years ahead of everybody

because we already have

the creative down.

We have the technical piece down.

We just need to put those two together

in a way that allows people to connect.

Right?

So for me,

I'm looking at myself as a Rosetta Stone

at this point in time, like,

how do I communicate?

And I've always looked at myself

as a bridge builder,

but I'm

taking a different framework of now,

how do I translate

these various languages, into success?

Because, you know, again,

if we're able to communicate globally

and not just locally,

then we can optimize on that, you know,

kind of objective function,

that global objective function.

And that's, you know,

kind of the way that I'm thinking and so,

but but I am who I am, you know,

and you kind of to,

to extrapolate Popeye's words,

that's all that I have

and, and,

you know, kind of

so understanding my limits.

But also understanding,

I know certain things.

So I can look at a problem

and I can solve it in my mind

and I can articulate it very quickly.

And so that's what I'm

just kind of really trying to master.

How do I launch the company

that just took the first,

seed round of investment for last week?

And I'm not going to mention it

here, but,

you know,

working with some notable

musicians, right.

You know, been doing this for decades.

How do I take that and get to market

with you were,

missteps

taking bigger swings

and do it more quickly

than has ever been done before? Right.

So that's that's the way

I'm thinking about this right now.

And I again, it's helping me do that.

I'm telling it,

here's the algorithm I want.

Please build this algorithm right.

The spreadsheet model for that.

And now, you know, like again,

it would take me two weeks to do that

because I've done it before. Right.

You know, and I've done it in,

you know, 20,

20 days, you know,

kind of

from the startup concept to the idea

to launching the product

and getting the check in the door.

So that's really,

you know, kind of what

I'm, what I'm working on.

And, and again, I'm just trying to,

minimize the time,

you know, kind of to success.

Yeah, I love that.

Well, is there anything that,

I've left out that you wanted to say

or leave our listeners with?

I think we're good.

I mean, honestly, you've had some

really

I appreciate you, the background,

research that

that's always super helpful.

You know, because sometimes you walk in

and people just want to chat,

but you being thoroughly

prepared is amazing.

So I think we've pretty much

covered everything.

Well, you're really fun to chat with.

I would chat with you more if I,

if we had time, but, I better let you go,

but I, I can't

thank you enough for

for being with us today

and I really appreciate it, Guy.

And just all the best to you.

We really we're really.

Happy that you’re here. Well you have my email.

So you know I'm available.

Absolutely. Well thank you so much.

Thank you. Take care.

Thanks for joining

us on the

season seven premiere of Problem Solved.

Make sure you follow wherever you listen

and we'll see you next time.