Noob School - Episode 81: The Power of Artificial Intelligence with David Hyde-Volpe

Episode Date: June 23, 2023

Today on Noob School, John is joined by David Hyde-Volpe, Principal Security Engineer and CTO at The Vizius Group. David speaks on the power of AI all across the board, from logistics to cybersecurity, and discusses with John how he and his team implement it to help businesses in many different manners. Tune in for interesting insight on a new age of technology, and much more. Check out what Noob School has to offer here: https://www.schoolfornoobs.com/ I'm going to be sharing my secrets on all my social channels, but if you want them all at your fingertips, start with my book, Sales for Noobs: https://amzn.to/3tiaxsL Subscribe to our newsletter today: https://bit.ly/3Ned5kL #noobschool #salestraining #sales #training #entrepreneur #salestips #salesadvice

New School. Okay, welcome back to Noob School. Today I've got another new friend. I know I've got a lot of old friends, but I'm glad to have a new friend here. This is David Hyde Volpe. David is from the area, moved down here when he was 13 from upstate New York. That's right? Fortunately for us, his parents worked for GE and got transferred, right?

That's right. And y'all decided to stay here. Yep. Love it here. That's great. That's great. That's correct. And you live out not on a farm but near a farm.

That's right. Yeah. Okay. Piedmont. Piedmont. How long does it take you to get downtown Greenville? 15 minutes. That's not bad.

No. That's like for most people, like if you lived in Atlanta, that would be considered in town. Yeah, I'd be in the perimeter. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. That's cool. So David, David went to Clemson and majored to some kind of engineering.

Chemistry. Chemistry. Is that not engineering? So you could do chemical engineering, but this was... Just straight up chemistry. That's right. Okay. And then went to Georgia Tech and measured in more engineering. So I did quantum theory at Georgia Tech.

Okay. What is that? So that's where you look into the theoretical underpinnings of our understanding of quantum reality. And you try to stretch them. So we have some basic understanding. We have some theories. we have some equations that describe some stuff, but a lot of them aren't practical. So if you want to make them practical to use in real life,

you have to stretch them to make approximations. And so that's what a lot of people, that's what I was working on, was how to reinterpret the theories and stretch them to approximate them so that they're actually usable. Because the math expands, it explodes exponentially,

and you can't really use it for anything practical. Can you give me an example? Sure. Like, let's say you're trying to, I don't know, figure out the way a material would behave. in real world. So to figure out how the material would behave, let's say you're putting the material under some kind of stress or how it would conduct heat.

Like maybe you're conducting, creating some kind of new super meta material like a carbon nanotube cable for a space elevator or something. And you want to know how it's going to behave. But you've never created the material. No one can make the material yet. But you want to theorize so that you give the engineers a direction to work towards to say, hey, if we were able to make a material like this, this is how it would perform,

and it would solve the problem. So it's worth investing money to look into it, right? So now you've got to go make a simulation. Well, in order to make an accurate simulation for some of these properties, you got to pick what level of theory you want to get at, right? What level of approximation? And so there's some, all the way from really coarse-grained models

down to something that approximates very, very accurately, physical reality. But the closer you get to physical reality, the more the mathematical complexity explodes at a high exponential. And so what we're trying to do in that kind of field is push the boundaries so that we can get accurate real-world answers in a simulation without having to pay the mathematical cost. So you could calculate the properties of that carbon nanotube rope

that's going to hold that space elevator car before we ever build it and be confident that it's correct. So if you could build it and test it, in traditional ways, that's what you do if it wasn't so expensive or so difficult to do. Yeah. So you can't do that. So you have to use quantum, which is when smart people are figuring out statistically how they think the things would work. Yeah, that's right.

And you can also use it for things like drug design. You know, right now the way it works is if you're in a drug lab, you build a whole bunch of analogs. You build hundreds or maybe thousands or maybe tens of thousands of analogs of a drug candidate. And then you just brew force test those drug those candidates, those analogs against the target system. And that's really expensive and time consuming. And you can only test so much. You only have so much time. But if you can write accurate computer simulations that represent the properties of the drug molecule and the protein receptor or the DNA binding site or whatever, boom, simulations can solve that problem.

And they're getting better and better all the time. And so that's, you know, some, some properties of a. drug molecule may be so sort of electronic in nature that you need to get to the level of how the quantum interactions are happening. So you need a quantum-aware simulation. There's some that are more coarse-grained that are just literally like electrostatics, which can be really like high-level simulations that you can run a big system. Okay.

Well, I think I understand what quantum mechanics is now, at least to some degree. And then after George Tech, which is probably... you know, one of the greatest schools for that kind of field in the world. Yeah. Top five anyway. It is, yeah. You came back to Clemson, and we're working on statistical mechanics. That's right.

So statistical mechanics, or statmec, is the translation layer between the quantum, the quantum world, which no one really quite understands, no one has a really good intuition for. Yeah. but we know how the math works and then you translate that into macroscopic properties because this quantum quantum stuff only applies when you're talking about

really small things or low energy things or you know just small systems but those are the real rules that the real physical universe follows yet somehow and they're also really weird by the way but also somehow from that emerges the rules

that we're aware of that we learn in the nursery about how physics works And how does that happen? Well, it's because there's so many particles that all the weirdness gets averaged out. Statement, statistical mechanics, tells you the math that governs how all the weirdness gets averaged out to produce real properties. So you can do a quantum level calculation of a tiny piece of a system. And then you stat mech to extrapolate what that means in physical reality. What's the heat capacity going to be?

What's some kind of strain characteristic going to be? Okay. So you're tethering the real proven math on the back end of a quantum study to figure out what that would really actually mean? Yeah, well, extrapolate that into physical reality. So if you know how one tiny little particle behaves, how would a collection of, you know, uncountably many behave when you average it out statistically? Okay. Well, this is actually one more interesting. sales shows we've ever done, but fascinating your background.

We'll get to sales in a minute, but it's just fascinating how much you studied this and your education. And it'd be interesting as the conversation goes forward as to how this kind of education can help business people and businesses do well. So after you left Clemson, you joined a small. software startup software and application startup and you worked there for how long so yeah I was one of the co-founders of that and we we worked at that for I guess it was around three years we worked at that yeah three years and we we started to get traction you know none of us knew what we were doing we didn't know from a marketing standpoint a sales standpoint we had no clue we knew how to build stuff that

we liked and we thought other people might like and that was about it it was really dumb, but learned a ton. It was not a success. In large part, because we didn't know what we were doing. I had one of those. Right. But I had no responsibilities at the time. I had no risk.

I could live on nothing. And so it was one of the fastest ways to learn a lot of really good lessons about pre-selling and marketing and knowing what you were going after. But, you know, we did adopt a strategy that had a chance of success. And if we had had maybe another year, maybe two, I think we would have gotten there. And what we learned was in that world, the real game for a small company like ours to play was not to produce any kind of product that someone would buy directly. But it was to get a reputation for being able to produce such a product.

And then get one of the larger studios to pick you up and put you on a project and kind of work it that way. because there's just no way to compete with the power of the publishing. I mean, there is the indie scene, and one out of a thousand indie developer studios will strike magic somehow and get a following, but it's not a viable path. Well, it's interesting, I think it's an interesting discussion to have because there's two paths to take, and I can support either path. One path is just getting out of school, let's just jump in there and try something. And one reason I like that is because you don't know what you don't know. And because you actually are trying. Because every year that goes by from that moment forward,

the chances of you doing it are less and less likely. Because you get married. You have children. And, you know, you have a house. You have a car. You know, all these things start to happen. But the other side of me says, you know, like Reed Hoffman, the guy who started LinkedIn, very pragmatic guy.

He lived out in Silicon Valley. all these people do well. He was kind of in the group. And he said, well, before I go out and do my thing, I'm going to learn how to be a project manager. I'm going to learn how financing a company works, how to raise money, how to sell, something about development. And he had like 10 years until he was 30

to really think of what that idea was. And then when he started LinkedIn, guess what? He did know what he was doing. You know, when I started my first company, I was young, 20-something. I was like, I'm going to do this, and it was a good idea. It was never going to be successful. I didn't know anything.

You didn't know what cash flow was. It's like, we're in a building, let's go. So, I don't know, you know, it's, it's a, I'll hear, here's another one, is some of these guys, you know, Gates, Zuckerberg, you know, not Bezos, but those two guys in particular, how in the world do you drop out of college at 19? and understand how you can be a coder. How do you know how to build a monster company and be the boss of marketing and sales and finance and legal?

How do you think that happens? I don't know. I would imagine it involves asking some good questions and surrounding yourself with good people. I mean, that usually would be the way. I don't know enough about their stories to know how they did it. But that often is a way to solve a problem. And that's one of the things that's giving me confidence to go into rooms that I probably don't have any business in or in deals that I probably shouldn't be involved in.

You know, solve problems that they probably shouldn't be turning to me to solve, but I know people. And having a network of people that you know and trust that can solve really hard problems is one of the biggest enablers for confidence in stepping into any situation. Yeah, and I would add, I mean, David, you're, I mean, gosh, how many problems have you solved between. Clemson and George Tech, where it's like, here's the thing, use these tools, solve the problem in your way. Isn't that what they're doing at Facebook when they run into a problem? Zuckerberg's having to figure out, who can I get to help me solve this problem, what of the scenario?

And they just, it's almost like a class. Yeah, yeah. It's a problem solving is problem solving. But you solve problems sort of in different spaces. And you've got to learn what the layout looks like, what the rules of the game are. Yeah. And often, like when I found transitioning from science into business, I didn't even know what the rules of the game were or the vernacular

or what I was trying to achieve. You know, I was good at optimizing systems, but I didn't even know what the system was to optimize, right? So that was the biggest thing was figure out what is the game. Yeah. How does this all work? And then once I know, then I can optimize.

But it was a lot of hard learning. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you've definitely learned a lot of, lot come a long way to be a business advisor now consultant. So now after the, you know, the software startup, and again, I wouldn't say it didn't work because if you, if you say whether it worked or not is did I learn something, you learned a lot. So it's probably a lot more valuable than an MBA. Yeah. And one of the things I learned that ran counter to the advice I've gotten from a number of

people is that partnerships can work. I had a lot of people along the years, you know, just say, don't, don't do it, don't get into partnerships with people, especially friends or whatever. And, you know, I get it. There's some pain there. Some horror stories. But partnerships can also work beautifully, even in hard situations, right? Like, we all remain friends through that whole situation that turned out of the company and, you know,

not being a success economically and all that. Yeah. Our relationships are still good to this day. So anyway, I think that was a really important lesson. We all must have had good, honest communication throughout the whole three years. Yep. Because it's very easy, particularly in the South, for people not to talk to each other and talk about hard things. And so y'all must have done that pretty well.

Yeah. And, you know, we shared a common worldview, a common faith. And I think that helped because that gave us all a framework on how to talk and be honest and open. Well, as you know, Elon Musk got first. fired from Patriots. No. So all those famous people worked at Patriot, Teal

and all his people. He said he went away. It was very difficult at the time at Patriot. They were losing money and very difficult. So he went away on a two-week honeymoon. He came back from his honeymoon. They were like,

we fired you while you were gone. I mean, they fired Elon Musk. And so this guy was interviewing Elon. He was telling the story. And they go, well, Elon, don't you hold it against those guys? And he goes, no, he goes, maybe it was a good decision. You know, he goes, Patriarch is doing pretty well. That's a pretty nice way to look at it, you know, versus holding the grudge or being angry.

So you never know. And so how did you choose, you rolled out of that software deal and you put your focus on cyber. Yeah. Cyber security. How did you make that decision? I'd like to say it was some kind of master strategy that I looked at the market. Yeah. My pastor knew a guy who was a good guy and who was a chief information security officer

and a chief information officer at a telecom company. And he said, you know what? This David guy, he's smart. This other guy, let's put you guys in the same room. You can figure something out. So I went and had coffee with him and we talked. And he was looking for a guy to come in and build his security program from scratch. And I was like, I don't know the first thing about cybersecurity, but I learn really fast.

And if you want someone who's going to cost you a little bit less money than the market and learns really fast and works really hard, I could be your guy. And he said, let's do it. And the rest is history. And now we're business partners and we work on all sorts of really cool projects together. And yeah. Who is that? Glenn, Glenn Johnson. Glenn.

Okay. I thought you're going to say Adam. No. No, Glenn introduced me to Adam. Okay. Yeah. Because Glenn and Adam, they work together at Ahold. Okay.

Yep. And I worked there as well. You did? Yeah. So you helped on the cyber team? Were you working for Adam then? Nope, Glenn. So Glenn, but Adam had a company with a bunch of people there too, right?

That's true. Yeah. It's a huge company. There's lots of space for multiple different cybersecurity vendors. And didn't they leave Greenville? Nope. They're still here. What do they do?

So they're a holding company for a ton of grocery stores. Grocer stores, okay. Fresh Market and shop and Save and it was Bailo. I think they divested Bailo at some point. That's what I was thinking. They did something. But it's a massive holding company. They're in top, I don't know, one of the tennis biggest companies.

It's Dutch, right? Yep. Yeah. Yep. Royal, O'Hold. Did you ever go over there, Holland? Glenn did a lot. It's a fun place.

I was low man on the tone pole back then. Yeah. Not anymore. Yeah. And so you're doing, just trying to get a good picture for what you're doing now, because I know you're involved in multiple things. So you're doing, you're a part-time CTO for a number of companies. Yep.

You do cyber consulting. What else do you do? So I do general technology. consulting. So chief information officer for an aerospace company. Okay. So we're building a single stage to orbit vehicle. We're designing it.

We haven't started building it yet. That'll happen, start at the end of this year. What does that mean single stage to orbit? Yeah. So it means you're not deploying like a secondary stage. Like you see like when the rockets take off, they have those like side boosters that might pop off. Yeah. Like with Falcon, they land part of it.

They land the first stage, but the second stage pops off. And that's all to control the mass as you kind of go through your deployment to orbit. Because you don't need to necessarily, you use up the first stage, and you don't necessarily need to drag that all the way to the final. So a single stage to orbit is maybe not always the most efficient for every mission profile. But it's a lot simpler and more reasonable. So that just means there's not the thing you kick off the back end. So it's one, so bang, two stage.

I got it, one stage, two stage. You might have three stages. But this vehicle will also be like a horizontal takeoff and landing. So it could use a runway. Okay, like the space shuttle. Yeah. But on the takeoff as well. Oh, okay.

Yeah. Well, that would be cool. Because like all the big problem is how much thrust, I guess, the energy it takes to take off straight up. That's true. Well, yeah. And, you know, it's, well, it, you're still going to be using a lot of energy regardless of how you do it.

But there's some key issues with doing horizontal. So with the horizontal, you can now deploy from any commercial runway in the world. So that's kind of interesting. You can also use it for more than just orbital projects. Like, you could use it for rapid transfer from one point on the earth to another point on the earth. And all you need is run. runway, a reasonably sized runway. So it opens up some other kind of mission profiles.

And then from a reusability standpoint, it's more like a plane than it is. Yeah. Are you helping them design it? No. I am by no means an aerospace engineer. I'm just building the technology systems designing the tech. For the company. Got you.

That they use to design the thing. Okay. Overall technology. So their technology stack? Yeah. So for instance, I came in there and we designed. a whole compliant. So that's another thing is because this is a

weapon essentially, right? They're not planning to use it as a weapon, but if you wanted to, you could, you could take this thing to orbit and slam it into some city and do a ton of damage, right? So the government treats this thing as a weapon. So there's a whole bunch of compliance,

international treaty on arms that you've got to comply with from a technology standpoint. And so coming in there and designing a system that would allow them to be, because there are they're a new, their startup. They're all remote. It's one of these totally,

they have no office. It's a hybrid, like, you know. And so how do I design a technology system? Because in the traditional aerospace world, it's all on-prem, in a server closet, there's guards, like it's very old school. And this company wanted to be totally new school. And it's like, how do we do that properly?

So coming in and designing a whole system that would work for them and give them the ability to still be all mobile and remote and make all that work without breaking the law. So on a sales question, how did you get that gig? How did you sell it? Yeah, so that was relationship sales. So, you know, a buddy of mine knew the CEO, and they actually, he made an introduction because he had questions about security. And I just started chatting with them about security and made a good impression on the CEO. And then he kind of handed me off to the CFO, who's also the CFO, who's also the CFO.

and we were also talking with the person in charge of business operations and just started talking about security and what I discovered is that the technology wasn't well defined. There wasn't a technologist involved

from an IT perspective and they didn't really understand what their technology was or how to use it or what they needed to do and so I said I'm happy to do anything you need in the cybersecurity space but it sounds like like you might benefit more from a general technology discussion. And then we started talking and, yeah,

and it turned out to be a good fit. And, yeah, we engaged on a sort of retainer contract. And I, well, first it was a fixed price kind of strategic roadmap project. So I built out the roadmap and I said, hey, I always build my roadmaps in such a way you could take it to somebody else. I don't want you to be locked into me, but they wanted me to take the roadmap and run with it. And so came on board as the proxional CIO and executed the plan. And it's all working now. Well, I applaud you for that.

And what I didn't hear there was you telling the CEO how good you were, how smart you were, you know, how you done this 100 times already. You seem to focus all on what's going on with their situation. And also kind of being, have you read the book, The Challenger Sale? Nope. It's a pretty popular sales book right now. But instead of just saying he wants cyber help, here's my quote for cyber help, you listened and you heard, you know what, I'll get you a quote for cyber help, but sounds like you really need this. That's what the challenger tells people to do, is it really challenged the buyer and say this is what we think you need based on our, you know, knowledge.

Yeah. So good for you. You just do it naturally. Yeah. I mean, well, that's a thing. You know, like I think I've gotten to become decent at sales, at least in professional services. And I have no formal training at all, right?

I haven't taken any courses. I haven't really read much in the way of any books. It's one good book you should read right there. Yeah. I'll definitely give that a read. I do like to read. But to me, sales was something I just sort of picked up by why. watching other people sell, and it's an essential necessary component of making a business work.

And so I love it from that perspective, but I really haven't studied it. Well, you know, you'd be really dangerous if you study it, but it sounds like you're doing pretty well. I'm doing okay. That's good. That's good. And so your consult, I mean, the people you consult for, when we talked earlier, small, mid-sized businesses, Fortune 10 businesses, government entities, what's the difference in like those three, for example, when you go talk to them, what's different about them?

So they're all different and they're all the same, right? So I guess let's start with the similarities. So they're all the same in that people do business with people that they enjoy working with or talking with, right? So the key thing is honestly, and going back to what you were talking about before, about listening, listening is one way of saying it or empathizing, but honestly, it's genuinely loving people.

If you genuinely love, I mean real love for people, then you'll do all those things automatic. You don't have to study them. It's not like a technique or a tactic. Honestly, go in the room trying to treat them the way you would want to be treated, and all of that other stuff will just work automatically. Absolutely. And so in all of those sales across all those different kinds of entities,

that's the commonality. And if you always approach things that way, you'll handle situations as best as you can, and you'll come across well, and people will want to find a way to work with you. And they will work with you. You can be honest about not knowing the next steps. You can be honest and say,

hey, I haven't gone through this procurement process. Can you help me? What do we need to do? What's next steps? You know, and so I've had to break into a whole bunch of areas is that I didn't have any business been, but you know, you stay humble and you stay honest and you ask questions and people will help you, you know, figure those out. Well, it's so interesting you say that because I have studied it, you know,

a resilient books on it and teach it. And some of the things that we try to teach people are things that you would do naturally with your love for people. For example, this is a tough one for most people to break through is just talk to the other person as if it's just you're talking to your friend or your boyfriend. brother or something, just talk to them. And salespeople will stiffen up and they'll say, well, hello, David, John Sterling, nice to meet you.

You know, and they'll go, they'll just go in that yucky sales voice. And people just hate it. That's one of the reasons I liked you and I met you right off the bat. We were just talking right off the bat, you know, what any messing around? The other thing, like it's, I tell people, if you were calling on your brother or your best friend and they need to help with whatever you were selling, how would you approach that? You would literally try to find out how can we help them the best way possible, and that's what we're going to do. Yep.

And if it's someone else, you bring in someone else. And if it's, you know, you don't need this, you need that, you tell them that. You don't just try to shove whatever it is that you're trying to sell down the throat. I agree. Yep. Because you know what? Like, you know, even from a totally mercenary perspective. Yeah.

If you do right by all the interactions. actions you have. Yeah. And you get them that help that they need a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, they're going to remember that. They'll come back around and you'll have some other opportunity that comes from that. You don't know. Yeah.

Just from a, even from a purely mercenary perspective, it's in everyone's best interest. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll add this. I've seen a lot of business people, salespeople, come through. The ones that have that attitude, they start out. successful, and then they're successful, and then they're always successful. Even if their company got bought and they got let go or, you know, something happened to change their trajectory,

they just go to the next place and they're successful. So, you know, it is, it is so simple, and yet so few people do it. So one key thing I've noticed is there are some people that are, I don't know the right words for this, but they're essentially stressed at work. Like, and I think often it comes down to personal finances. If your house is not an order and you're afraid of losing your job or afraid of not making the next big sale because your commission, blah, blah, blah, that stress will bleed through into everything and you tighten up on everything. And you might drink more and have other bad habits. So, you know, I've always tried to operate when I'm in a corporate setting, like when I'm working for someone, as if I'm totally free. and that allows me to say anything, speak truth to power.

Like, I'm not going to be rude. Why would I be rude? But I'm going to be honest. I'm going to give my opinion. I'm not afraid to speak up. I'm not afraid to say no. That's not a good idea. And I think that's, I think that was part of what, you know, helped me progress in the corporate.

Because in cybersecurity, when I first got involved with that side, I was, you know, I was an employee. And then within a few years, I was managing things and running things. And then when Glenn left, when we got acquired, He brought me with him as his partner and blah, blah, blah. But, like, I think that freedom and willingness to act and not be afraid was a big part of us working together. I agree. And it comes from not being afraid. Yeah.

I think a lot of people are afraid. Afraid to lose her job or whatever. Yeah. One of the training classes I went to said, act like you're financially and independent, whether you are or not. You need to think that way, and you will be financially independent. independent. Yeah. We'll know that you have a good enough control over your personal finances that if you had to go get a job at a restaurant.

Yeah. And work tables to put food on the table, you could do that. Yeah. I know that I could do that. Yeah. I know that no matter what, unless the entire economy melts down and nobody's working or there's some kind of war or shenanigans, I can put food on the table. Mm-hmm. And so what else do I care about?

Yeah. I can take care of my family. It's okay. Yeah. Cool. So let's talk about the main subject. The reason we met is I went to a seminar that you and Adam Anderson put on about chat GPT, which you have become an expert in in a short period of time.

And particularly, I mean, I think our audience knows what chat is, but how do you think it relates to sales? What kind of things can salespeople use it for? And what happens to them if they don't use it? Yeah. I think there's a lot of different vectors, and I think we're still discovering what all those vectors are, right? But there's some easy ones.

There's strategy, right? You're just, you're trying to think outside the box. You're trying to think, what's a, what's a market I haven't thought about, or what's an angle of attack I haven't thought about, or, you know, just strategizing. So just ask it open-ended questions, you know, just dream with it. And it'll throw out some things that aren't great, but it'll throw out a bunch of things that are good ideas

that you might want to track down. That's one thing, strategy. Another is basic blocking and tackling, right? So I've got to write a whole bunch of emails. You know, I've got to produce some kind of SOWU. I mean, it depends on how your sales is organized. Like with our professional services, a lot of our people selling are the people actually doing

the solutions engineering, right? So, you know, we're taking someone all the way from initial conversation to producing and delivering the SOW and taking it all the way. So for someone who's got those kinds of sales responsibilities, like actually producing the SOW, it's great at that, helping you get the scope clear and thinking about the terms. And then getting a little more next gen or next level is thinking about, and this may not be something a salesperson can go and do on their own unless they really want to educate the themselves,

some, it would be to, you know, build some enabling technologies. So these things are going to come, you know,

Salesforce is going to be rolling these out, blah, blah, blah. But there's a whole world of enabling technologies that this technology will be the heart of,

you know, things like fully automating all of your, like, low probability kind of leads that, you know, you just need to drip on.

Right. And, but you want it to be human and not be awful. Yeah. Chat, if you give it the right promptings can generate very human-sounding non-awful emails that you can use to just

kind of drip on a lead that's you know you're like that's eight months from now lead but i want to keep dripping on it so it would just drip on them with emails and texts and stuff until they self-qualified by saying i want a demo and i've got a budget and i've got a time frame and yeah or even just expressing real genuine interest in a genuine conversation right like yeah it will be able to parse those responses and say, hey, we got one, right? It'll be able to look at that response and judge it as a viable next step. Yeah, it's a, I've loved working with it since I took that seminar, particularly if I've got to write something or PowerPoint or something like that presentation, I can just tell it kind of what

I want and then get rough draft. And then that's all I need once I have the draft. Have you tried tome? No, what is it? So Tome is another AI technology built on top of GPT and Dolly. Okay. And from a single prompt, it'll generate a PowerPoint presentation. That's specifically for PowerPoint?

Yeah, I mean, I guess I should just say presentation in general. It's kind of like tissue and Kleenex. Okay. But yeah, it'll make a presentation. Okay. And it'll produce the text for the slides and produce images. for the slides. And it's pretty cool.

I use it when I'm making like a first draft of a pitch deck for a new company or something. I use it now as part of my impact filter process. I'm just generating a sample pitch deck for myself to look at and be like, does this make sense? Yeah, that's good. I tell you, I've got one that I worked really hard on that I use for like corporate presentations. If I'm speaking to a big sales team, I've got, you know, it's like 20. these slides and it's all kind of new new things that I've seen work for salespeople so it's like the latest and greatest including chat I think I'll get tome to do the same I'll give it the same

prompts and see what it comes up with yeah probably be better yeah it's you know it's a work in progress yeah it's cool I don't think it's really quite prime time ready but it's it's an idea it's a it's a it's a picture of where we're going it's coming quick man yeah well let me ask you a few quick hitters here. We talked a little bit about head trash, you know, things that we believe for some reason that turn out not to be true. Do you have any of those that you can share with your with the group? So, you know, there's some common, there's some commonalities between, I think, a lot of people, but, you know, one one that I had that, you know, probably a lot of people have had at times is just like not not having the confidence to walk into a new situation and offer a

suggestion or solution people call it imposter syndrome or whatever but um you know the thing i realized on that is there's a whole mess of people out there giving advice that have no idea what they're talking about and nine the nine tenths of a solution is is being willing to like put in the work show up yeah give your advice like do the research, do your homework, and just do it. Because there's a whole, so many people out there that are throwing out stuff that's just not even close to right. So if you're willing to like work hard and do your best to come up with a solution to a problem,

it's probably worth throwing out there. Yeah. I would tag on to that. I'm no different than anybody else. I've got some of that too, depending on what I'm supposed to be doing next, whether it's a big speech or meeting someone really important, you're like, oh, I don't think I'm ready for this, you know, whatever, is to recognize that's just something in your brain.

It's scared, it's this little scared part of your brain that wants to run away. It's like, oh, there it is. I'm not going to worry about it. I'm just going to ignore that, and I'm just going to go ahead and do it. You know, the other thing you can do with that is thank it. Thank it. Right? Because that little part of your brain, one of the purposes, is so that you're prepared.

Okay. Right. So you get that anxiety before any big thing, especially when you know it's coming. Yeah. And so its purpose is to ask you, are you prepared? And so, you know, what you should do is ask yourself, then, am I prepared? Right. Is there anything that I could do that I haven't done? Yeah. And if you've done all the things you can think of to do, then thank it and move on. Yeah. Right. It's interesting. That's a very, very good point. Very good point. I think some of the times, particularly when I was younger, when I felt that anxiety, it's because I wasn't prepared. You know, I'm probably like, oh, I should have studied harder. And let's talk about the anatomy of a large deal. Our listeners love to hear when we can talk about, you know, because people start out making certain size deals

and over time bigger and bigger. Let's talk about a bigger one that you've made and what the anatomy, how long it took, and what was the important pieces of it? Yeah. You know, we could talk about maybe one in the Caribbean. So, well, there's, yeah, that'd be an interesting one. There's a couple, there's a couple interesting ones in the Caribbean for different reasons.

But this one, yeah. So there was one that we, there were many moving parts. It was a project for a sort of quasi-governmental organization. Karacom. They're an alliance of Caribbean states. So they have standing at the UN, for instance.

So they're kind of sovereign. I don't know what the legal definition of what they are is, but they're an alliance. And they had, it was EU-funded grant money. So that made it really interesting.

And then there were three different partnerships at play. So we're in the US doing the, I was doing the design work, for this system. It was a,

let's see, what can I say? It was a sort of sensor network. So I was designing it, designing the software that would sit behind it and collect all the data under the analysis, as well as the sensors themselves. And so there was a,

we had a partner, we had two partners in the region, one doing the software, and one was just providing, like, the computers that the analysts would sit at. which is actually a hard problem in some of these places. But their main role was they had the relationships and they had the 20 years in business on the island

and all the checkboxes you had to do, right? And so, yeah, it was a matter of getting the right people in the right rooms and just walking through one step at a time. We had had a pre-existing relationship with one of the partners, but not the other. and that partner had a relationship with the other person. So it was like this giant like chain, Daisy chain. But I mean, you just, it all came about because we were talking to the owner of the software company.

And he had this, there was this RFP that got put out for the project. And he was like, it sounds like cybersecurity something, something. And I was like, yeah, I think I could design that. So I put together a little draft. of what that could look like. They talked to the partner and it was exciting. And so I went a little further. And it just took it one step at a time and communicated.

I'm not sure what insights your listeners might be interested in. But we just kind of walked through the process. How long did it take you? Well, the project still hasn't fully wrapped. But from a selling standpoint, it was, I think it was a six-month, eight-month cycle. That's pretty quick. Yeah. So I'm thinking usually in the island.

things slow down a little bit. Yeah, but they were already behind, you see, and they already had the money allocated from the EU. And they were already way behind because of COVID. So they needed to move fast. And the other thing is the way of these, I'm not sure that. The way a lot of these RFPs work,

whether they should or not, is I think they have vendors in mind before they make them. Yeah, exactly. That probably shouldn't be what's happening. And I don't know that that's what happened in this case, but I know that happens. Yeah. So, but.

Well, it's, you know, yeah, part of the answer to doing a big deal is does take time, takes time for David to do enough deals where he's comfortable, multiple partners, you know, another country, you know, it just gets more complicated. So you have to learn. Yeah, one of the things I'm learning is export banks are great. We didn't know that back then.

Yeah. and, you know, another deal in the Caribbean that went really wild and sideways. We were, let's see, they asked me to come in, an old British intelligence person in BVI, British Virgin Island, knew of a need at a government organization for security for an application. And he brought me in, he said, hey, you guys need some security in this application, this guy can help. that guy being me and so I took a look at what they were doing

I didn't get into any of the guts this was just you know took a look at the website basically and I said yep you definitely should have someone look at it whether it's me or somebody else and they were like okay cool put together a proposal

sticker shocked I think because that government didn't really do any cybersecurity so they didn't know what it should cost so I think they just had sticker shot because they had no idea. And then a few months go by, we start hearing some rumblings in the news

about something going on. And all of a sudden I got a call, and it's an emergency project now. And now they're paying a lot more than they would have paid if they'd done it up front. And now I'm working through the night. Anyway, I get in there. I find a whole bunch of stuff.

I'm able to get into the system, you know, all the things. and then all of a sudden payment hasn't hit our bank. Remember, even when you get a deal linked, it's not the same as money hitting the bank. And so I ended up having to write basically a semi-extortive letter to send up the chain above this very high-level officials head to go to an even higher-level official's head that said,

hey, there's major problems here. And if you want to know what those problems are, I can't release that information until you pay your bills. So that was a weird experience. Did you get paid? Yep. And then we got on a call with another government official who said, should we shut down the immigration system?

And I was like, you shouldn't ask me that. I'm not elected. All I can tell you is what the state is, system is, what the problem is, what someone could do with it, and how you can fix it. That's it. You get to make those calls. It's wild. Well, let me ask you this. I've got a couple more questions. What is your favorite word? Probably hope. Okay, nice. Yeah, I commissioned three pipes once for my friends, two of my best friends and I, and their names are Faith, Hope, and Love. and the pipe I kept was hope.

It looks kind of like a sunrise. I'm a very hopeful person, I like to think, and I see opportunities. I'm also the sort of evangelist of self-employment. So I've had a number of friends. I've been able to be a part of their journey and give them encouragement and advice on how to step out of the handcuffs of employment and go on their own. That's one of the greatest pleasures in my life is when I get to help someone think a little bit bigger and think, yeah, you know, I could do this.

I could take a step out to be known. Yeah, and very often they just, they haven't even done the exercise for how could I? I need this many hours at this rate or whatever the thing is, you know. Yeah, I was just talking to someone earlier about how people, like the old-fashioned salary job people, you know, those gazillion people that work for Facebook and Google. Those people, there's like Reddit subsites where people have two and three different jobs. They're all working remote. They're just playing the game on the screen and what's the least I can do to keep my job? Minimum viable employee?

Yeah. Yeah. And what I enjoy is working with people, smart people like you, where we have an agreement on a project, or we have a retainer, or we have something where we're just working together on something very specific, the specific deliverable. And we're not hanging out together 40 hours a week, you know, just hanging out, doing the football pool and the birthday party. And, you know, geez, I think it's much better this way.

Yeah, I love the freedom. Yeah. The freedom to say there's an opportunity. Yeah. I have an idea on how to go after it. Yeah. And then just do it. Yeah.

That is the greatest, the greatest part of. No committee. Yeah. No policies and rules and committee. Yeah. No, that's not your job. Yeah. No.

Stay in your lane, David. Stay in your lane. Right. See an opportunity to go after it. Yeah. Well, last question. Do you have anything, of all the different things you're doing, do you have anything you'd like to promote?

Yeah, I guess. You know, probably in the vein of the conversation we're just having, my new venture is Dodo consulting. Okay. Evolve or die. Yeah. But the idea is pretty simple. I've got some smart people I've pulled together that understand business,

and they understand AI and all the stuff that's coming with generative AI. And they're very practical and pragmatic group. We just come in, we learn what you're doing. Yeah. That's the key is, what do you do? Yeah. How do you do it? what areas can we give to AI to do instead so you can focus on the areas of the business that you can have the biggest impact in.

And then that's it. It's pretty simple. We just come in and help people use AI in their business. So you are the smart people who help people figure out how to use chat for their business. That's right. Okay. How can you use it in sales? How can you use it in engineering?

How can you implement it in your website to give them a non-horrible chatbot experience? for your users. Yeah. You know, how can you understand your data better? Can you, can you take your internal proprietary data and create, you know,

something that can be used to make your help desk people really, really effective? You know, go from like a level one type resource to a level two type resource. Yeah. All kinds of areas, yeah. And then, are there any products we can help you build?

Yeah. Because we've got really smart technologists. I know a whole bunch of developers and, you know, people in the space I can bring in that say, hey, there's a specific product that, would really accelerate your business and wow your customers.

Maybe even a simulator. Maybe even a simulator. I've written a bunch of those. Thank you, buddy. Yeah, man. Appreciate you being here. Yeah. All right.

Thank you for inviting me.