Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Welcome to the Victory Show.
Hey Victors. Welcome to this episode of the Victory Show. If this is your first time joining us, I'm Travis Cody, best selling author of 16 books. I've had the privilege of helping hundreds of business consultants, founders and entrepreneurs broke write and publish their own best selling books as well. And in that journey, I discovered a really fascinating pattern. A lot of businesses hit a revenue plateau, usually around a million dollars a year, and they struggle to break through it. So on this show, I sit down with some of the world's most successful CEOs, leaders and business owners to uncover the strategies they use to overcome those plateaus and scale their businesses to new heights. And more importantly, how you can do the same. So get ready for some deep insights and actionable takeaways that you can implement in your life and business starting today day. My guest for this episode lives at the forefront of the intersection of technology, business and innovation. Alejandro Martinez is a powerful powerhouse in data and AI space with over 20 years of experience delivering transformative solutions across the US and Europe.
Today he's the CEO of Propelling Tech. He leads a cutting edge consulting firm that helps organizations reduce cost of ownership while also accelerating time to market through tech driven data and AI strategies. His impact has earned him global recognition. In fact, he's been named one of the top 50 global healthcare consultants three times by the Consulting Report. He's been honored as a visionary leader in data and analytics by Analytics Insights. And he's also taken the global stage as a speaker on AI at the World Economic Forum in Davos. And he's the co author of Survive and Thrive, the third edition, which was written alongside Reebok founder Joe Foster. Now, beyond Propelling Tech, Alejandro is a director and advisor at CLM Capital, supporting startups and real estate ventures. He's a dedicated mentor through the Orbitron mentorship program, the US editor for Naked Chief.com and a regular contributor to Forbes where he shares thought leadership on AI analytics and business transformation. Alejandro, welcome to the show. I'm so glad that you're here.
[00:02:20] Speaker B: Thank you Travis for having me.
[00:02:22] Speaker A: So you, you started with an engineering sort of lens when you began your career, correct?
[00:02:29] Speaker B: Yep. That was kind of the, the call I was getting basically when I was at school. Like, like, I like the mathematics and I like the problem solving and knowing how things work. So I went into the engineering side.
[00:02:43] Speaker A: Wow. And so where did you start your career then?
[00:02:46] Speaker B: I started with a degree called Business Engineering. So one of the pieces, and that was kind of my doubts because a lot of the engineering were industrial, civil engineering, medical engineering.
And I was like I don't see myself on those fields. I like economics, I like finance, I like to be working on let's say on a company itself.
Then I found this like I found business engineering and commercial engineering. So I started studying business engineering that at the end is kind of close to industrial but with more focus on marketing, finance.
Like the aspects of I don't know, managing a company or managing a business.
[00:03:35] Speaker A: Wow.
And so what was that, that first say three to five years as you were doing that then what, what did that your first three or five years of your journey look like?
[00:03:46] Speaker B: So initially like because it is a little bit complex even on, on how I went to college I ended up spending like nine years in college. I don't know if I would recommend that to someone. I did four degrees so like complementing even my studies and how I did it. But at the beginning I wanted to learn a lot about about finance and even myself I used to see myself or envision myself as let's say type of a Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley type of company. Like working on capital markets, working with big numbers. I don't know. I used to work with database and options and working on the strategies for. From there I did an interchange with another university in Spain and I started learning about the marketing side and the strategic side of the things.
After having two work experience I did a work experience on promoting investment in UK and then working for the Cedar Group and I was like okay, this is not what I like. And now that I'm getting exposed to marketing and strategy I like this more. So I started getting into that aspect of how to define strategies, goals, how to get the a better positioning, how to create a marketing plan and and that side took me to the innovation side like working towards that. So I ended my last years on on this nine year period getting more exposed to research and research on innovation.
From there I started and even I had a professor saying why, why are you here? I was like I love learning, I love doing research, finding things that are no answer. He was saying well if you like learning just go to consulting. So I started consulting on strategy side strategic planning company by helping companies doing their strategic plan, defining their goals, defining the action plans and from there working on strategy. I have to experience like I experience the balance scorecard from Kaplan and Norton that at the end is it has a cause effect but you're working with KPI so when you implement those tools into companies you need data and that was kind of oh I like this thing. I like data, I like how this is getting exposed to KPIs and how companies are making decisions. So it sounds like, I don't know, compact, but it was a nine year journey where I learned international management, I learned project management, I learned the whole aspect of business administration and then the business engineering side.
[00:06:54] Speaker A: There's nothing like studying school for nine years and then starting to work in the field and realize like, wait a minute, I don't really like that.
[00:07:03] Speaker B: And that's one of the things that I think, I think has an advantage is those nine years I always was wondering like, is it worth it or is not worth it? Like you see your friends all performing in corporate world and everything. And I like, I'm learning. So by the time I came to the business world, meaning the knowledge that I have my backpack full of things was already there. So I knew how to do certain things. And normally people at my level didn't have the skills.
Consulting has an approach of the learning aspect and then it has also an approach that is close to the gamification, like the Candy crush aspect.
You get to one level and then you want to get to the next level. And I'm really competitive on everything that I do. I, I always say to everyone, like one of the things that I enjoy the enjoy the most is winning my competition. Like, like, meaning that's like, oh my God, this is next level for me.
So I think that piece took me like in an accelerated path inside the consulting world.
[00:08:17] Speaker A: I love it. It's the Alejandro Candy Crush business domination strategy.
[00:08:23] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, you know what is funny? I always say every time that I need to do, I don't know, selling a house, selling a car, I had the experience of always selling to someone in my industry. I don't know why, it's not that when I'm selling directly.
So my last house in Barcelona when I sold it was to someone on the C level on Candy Crush game. And I was like, oh, this is cool.
[00:08:51] Speaker A: That's funny. That is funny.
So you had mentioned earlier, before we jumped on the call, that one of the things that really kind of accelerated your growth inside the consulting space was you call the inter partnership.
Let's talk a little bit about that because I find that really fascinating.
[00:09:09] Speaker B: So at the end is when you are in the corporate world, you have your job and you need to do your things. But even if you have the mindset of creating new things, I like to have the feeling of I'm not getting into my comfort zone.
So I'm not getting sleepy or like to comfort in where I am.
So even when I have to do my my day to day job, I was trying to find ways to create something new even inside my my own company where I was getting paid a salary and I was doing so in that way. Like we ended two points of creating new products and creating lines and promoting innovation internally in the company to positions of studying new business. Like I don't know, we created a company called Gold for Gold that it was analyzing performing of the soccer players like Messi Ronaldo.
So at the end everything was data. So if you put all the game events into data, how you can turn this into like teams, into bad companies, into media companies to react to those data points.
[00:10:32] Speaker A: Oh that's funny.
So part of what you talk about in your, in your bio is you had this phrase reduce total cost of ownership. What does that, what does that actually mean? I've never heard that phrase before.
[00:10:47] Speaker B: So the like. Normally when you're building a solution, a data and AI or a technology solution, one of the pieces that customer looks look to have in, in a clear picture is what is going to be the total cost of this solution. But not just to buy it, is to buy it, to implement it, to maintain it, to like how, how many people from the customer side needs to get involved. So at the end they have salaries. So at the end is the overall cause of owning a solution is how you reduce that.
And that's something I found meaning by being in the industry like 20 years.
What I have found is that we were in a trap. Meaning consulting companies is a business. So you need to have your own business and you have your technologies that are giving you like a lot of that business. So the more business you get with those technologies, then you promote those technologies, then the technologies work with you. So it becomes like a cycle.
So what it end happening is the technologies that are more adopted in the market are the ones where consulting companies are getting the most of the revenue. And I always say you do something one day in technology A and then three years after they ask you to migrate to technology B, but you still do the same revenue. It's not that the customer is gaining efficiency on your services.
So this is where I started saying hey, we have an opportunity here to tackle.
And we created a technology driven approach where instead of focusing on technology A and B, let's focus on the technology that is producing the TCO and is accelerating the time to market. And then based on that technology, whatever is remaining for services, then we add the services and we have, for example, technology partners that work with us where our services are five minutes, so like literally zero.
And people say what is your model is like. Our model is to bring value fast.
So meaning budgets and initiatives are still there. We can complement you in other things that are less automated. But everything that is automated, why we want to reinvent the wheel and do it manually.
[00:13:26] Speaker A: Wow. So if I understand it and for most consultants, then kind of go the back way, right? They bring in their services, here's everything we're doing for you, and then here's the tech stack we're going to use to implement that. But you're starting with the tech first.
[00:13:38] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:13:39] Speaker A: So what, what is. What's a couple of use cases where you've applied this in the real world?
[00:13:44] Speaker B: So real world. For example, the first one we started, that is a nice one. I love it because we started in the Middle east kind of with with all the leaving the previous company and everything. We started in the Middle east in the Saudi Kingdom.
In that one. They're creating the city line, like the whole city in the desert, but needs to be fully autonomous. So having all the, like the agriculture fields and everything doing all the monitoring of those fields, like for me was kind of science fiction level on how those things were achieved. And we're working on deploying those solutions faster than customer was saying to us, you're getting in days with our previous company was getting in months.
And that's where the total cost of ownership is happening.
And it can come to simple things. I don't know. We had it with another customer where we went and they were saying, hey, this year our budget is limited.
We just have to do a migration of our BI system from A to B.
We would like to invite you, but at the end what we want from you is hours and a rate. And we were like, can you let us do it our way? Meaning we put technology, we see how we can do the migration using technology and then we add our services that will have a rate and the hours.
They were kind of doubting at the beginning.
Then we managed to automate 67% of the whole migration. So a migration project that would be six months, it went to one month and a half.
And another thing that I found really interesting is with the merge of two big players on the CPG industry, we're working with them on digitalizing 500 factories around the globe for them. It goes from every single machine, gets digitalized every single event on everything that is happening, from weather, water consumption and even the whole production Data is getting digitalized and that gives a whole end to end value stream map for the company itself. Know where the products are, what is the situation, how they can really satisfy the demand that is they are getting.
[00:16:21] Speaker A: Wow, that's, that's amazing.
So obviously data and AI is a huge part of your business now. At what point did you guys start incorporating that? And I, you know, I guess the big question is from your perspective, what are, what's the optimistic view of AI over this next, you know, three to five years.
[00:16:44] Speaker B: So internally on our side, we started saying we need to do things differently on everything for our customers, but also for us internally.
So I always say it's not just AI, it's the convergence of AI, blockchain, augmented reality, quantum, all the technologies coming together.
And at the end, even internally, ourselves, we challenge our process.
Anything that we're doing that doesn't add value is how we can automate that, that component, how we can do things more efficiently even on, on our side, like our own marketing at propelling tech.
When we were selecting the companies to work with us, we were saying we want a company that is using technology to accelerate their process as well with, with the same vision that we have. And that goes to like the, the, the other question that we're saying, how we see it is what we were looking is companies that see technologies that augment them, meaning they're not afraid of using AI to accelerate the process of content creation or image creation. At the end, I don't know. Every single image that we have at propelling tech has been done using technology as an augmentation. But is a human behind designing, so then we get an acceleration there.
That's what we believe on technology. Meaning I always say it's kind of the Ironman approach where you're blending technology with a human.
The technology itself doesn't do anything.
The Ironman without the technology is like, without the suit is no one. It's just a normal human.
But when you put it, you have one of the most powerful superheroes.
[00:18:39] Speaker A: So that's the, It's a good analogy. I like that.
[00:18:42] Speaker B: That's the aspect that we're looking like, meaning it's not about replacing. Of course this is going to replace a lot of things that we normally do and don't make any sense for us to do it because they don't add value.
So we can create things in a faster way. Kind of what we were saying, like this project a six months, we were doing that in one month and a half.
So right now when people Ask me like, hey, who is your competition? Is like change, like, meaning right now we don't see it's hard for a company to come and say, hey, we have an innovation to bring to our customer. It's like, okay, like, how much were we going to get from that customer? It's like, no. In fact, we're going to reduce our sales with that customer because we're going to do things more efficiently or more productive.
No one is going to execute that. Like, the only way for you to execute it is you need to come out of the blue and start something new.
But I believe on, on that or we believe on technology augmenting the biggest risk here is not getting the technology pushed to everyone. So it can create more gaps. Like we, if we separate people, like between, let's say the smartest and the average, if we put technology to the smartest that are the ones that could get more exposed faster, the gap is going to be bigger.
So that gap, that's where it can create issues. Those gaps created because of people using technology, of course it can create gaps in society or in the economy itself.
[00:20:26] Speaker A: Wow, that's really interesting. I would have never thought about the gap of, of that. But that, that feels the way that it is.
So for your company then, for, for propelling what is like the, like what is sort of your overall vision? Where do you guys want to. Would it take this?
[00:20:47] Speaker B: For us, we start with a claim of we want to help companies navigate the, like, the unknown. In general, when we were talking about innovation or entrepreneurship, like people say you need to have the courage to jump into the unknown.
And this goes to like, I don't know, some people say between a crazy man and a genius is just the execution. But when, when everyone jumps into the idea, everyone is crazy. Like, and that goes to entrepreneurship. Like when you have an idea that you want to execute, you're a crazy person, need to prove yourself, you are going to execute it.
Even right now, even having conversations with VCs, they say they focus on the team itself, how, how committed this theme will be to execute that idea. Because ideas nowadays are for free.
Like they're there and you can get it from an AI assistant or you can get it just from like collective knowledge. But getting that execution is going to be the key.
So for us is at propelling tech is how we help companies navigate this unknown.
We normally say is we help you innovate in a controlled risk manner. And one of the pieces is, I always explain to customers is you feel the fear when it's something unknown for you. Like meaning when you're opening a door for the first time, you open with care. You don't know what is on the other side.
But when you're opening that door every day, every minute, even if it's like parasailing or whatever it is, is your common sense, like, meaning you know how to do it, you can do backflips, you can do whatever, you can do it with a style you can sleep in, in the way, how you're jumping from, from a plane. Like you can do a lot of things. It becomes your, your common sense. So you lose the fear, you lose the risk.
So that's the aspect that we see at propelling how we can become a sharepoint to the companies and guide them through this. And none on the technology, knowing that the technology is there to make things easier.
So as our goal, what we want is how we increase adoption of technology in companies, how we accelerate that adoption.
[00:23:26] Speaker A: So if somebody's listening to this interview and they're going, God, that sounds amazing, who's the perfect fit for you guys? Is there a size of company that you know you can come in that like it's sort of like this, this sweet spot.
[00:23:40] Speaker B: Like meaning for us the biggest thing is like people need to be open to, to change.
[00:23:49] Speaker A: No, no one wants to be open to change in the business world.
[00:23:53] Speaker B: No, it is risky. But I would say one of the pieces that we have found is by, by this like getting in Saudi. Our competition was offshooting. So like meaning we were competing with the cheapest rates in the market and we, we bid them as a cheaper option to them.
So I like normally getting into big or small companies, the barrier is the price. We don't have it. Like normally we're more efficient than traditional consultings on, on delivering that. I would say it's more someone that wants to modernize the architecture or is looking to modernize the architecture and get value from data. That's where we can help. Like how you bring that data from whatever system you have to create data driven decision making structures inside your company in order to make decision faster.
[00:24:53] Speaker A: So are you then using AI with that data then to actually do a lot of the sort like so you were saying, like if I'm a company, I'm using data. In the past, maybe it took my team three weeks to get through the reports, but now with AI tools we're able to get through that stuff in an hour.
[00:25:09] Speaker B: Yeah, and that's specifically what we have. Our customer for example, was saying to us, hey, Getting these reports is taking us three months.
And we were like that something wrong there. Like, meaning it doesn't make any sense.
Is taking you three months in order to get by the time you get the data to make a decision is gone. Like, meaning you need to act on data quick. And that's the piece. Like, meaning one of the pieces that we found is it takes so much time to deliver that if three months is to do a report, then you don't ask for the report. Like, I don't know if I'm going to get this in three months. It's going to be this amount of money. Then whatever. If you're delivering in hours, even if you say, hey, I want a report for the receptionist, yeah, it's just one hour. If it doesn't work, you just throw it away. But at the end, it doesn't feel is like you're building a cathedral. No, you're just building a small house. If you like it, yes. If not, next one.
And that's the approach that needs to happen with technology. A lot of companies, for example, when I say able to change is we come from an era where every company was customizing everything. Like you take your software and you customize.
Consulting companies say, oh, it's nice doing this customization.
By the time you finish the customization, there is something new in the market already.
So in the past we were able to do this because the cycle were shorter.
[00:26:50] Speaker A: Like, it was like, it was sort of like Gary Vaynerchuk, you know, he started talking about the content game in 2013, but that was before Instagram and Tick Tock and all these others. And he's like, you got to be doing. And somebody's like, I got to do it. And then it was like, oh, but there's a new one and then there's a new one and then there's a new one. And like, I gotta be doing it on all of them.
Right? Nobody could keep up.
[00:27:10] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's totally like that. And at the end is, I don't know, I had it before. Like in technology, AI is the one that is getting the hype. But even a lot of companies, for example with ChatGPT, they were jumping to do features that ChatGPT itself covers right now as a standard product.
[00:27:33] Speaker A: So, wow.
[00:27:35] Speaker B: It is difficult just to like, with technology, you need to focus on something that is adding value that can become a cornerstone for the customer. Like, it doesn't make any sense for you to reinvent the wheel unless you're going to reinvent the wheel. In a different way. Like, I mean that's really, for example, what Deep SEQ did. Like they're reusing models that are already created but using different frameworks in order to set up the architectures.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: Yeah, something that costs $50 billion. They re architected it for what, 18 million or whatever. It was something ridiculous.
Yeah. So Ben, how. How are you using like how does the data and AI, how's that leading? Through helping companies accelerate things to market. What, what processes is that allowing them to shave off? That there's accounting for the faster release.
[00:28:29] Speaker B: So it comes with different aspects. But I don't know if we go from the business side and on the business side, for example, there are solutions for how to do process mining. So show you how you're executing on the different process.
If we go for example to sales, how to do a promotional impact. Analyze the if you're spending on promotions, what is the real impact that those promotions are having in the market? So how you decide in, let's say in real time. Like if you're putting something and it's not elastic how you change the strategy really quick?
It could be like the mom forecasting or creating sales forecasting that are more related on how you make decisions. If we go for example to I don't know, call centers, like how you consume all the data from your customers in both to answer them and also to improve your product there.
I always say every customer has different business needs or goals. So it depends on really those goals in order how you apply technology.
I always do the analogy to a restaurant.
For example, if you take a restaurant, it's fully intensive in services. You need waiters, you need hosters, you need chef.
You can put everything on technology, but what is the experience you want to give as a restaurant to your customers? And like do you want to have a sommelier coming and explaining the wine or do you want a tablet that is giving you based on your food, what is the best wine that you should pair like? I mean you can achieve both, but it doesn't mean that every restaurant should have technology to do that. Because the sommelier aspect gives kind of the VIP of I will explain you in a personalized way. So it's the same with a company. I always say what are those process that are key for you to create competitive advantage.
So how you drive those things and focus on those things. What I believe should be in the mind of everyone is a lot of companies, they do what I normally call keeping the pace. So I don't know my neighbor, they just put this CRM. I'm putting this, erm. They just got this technology. I got this technology.
So you're just putting. Following what everyone else is doing. When you do that, you're literally wasting your money because that means you're coming with the decision of putting a technology that someone else did, and maybe that someone else also did it because someone else did.
So you're just keeping the pace on technology, but you're not really changing the status quo or gaining competitive advantage.
[00:31:33] Speaker A: It's so interesting. They used to work in Hollywood and I used to see that in the marketing departments where they would. Every movie would come out. They had sort of the same process, right? And I remember asking questions but like, why? Right? And the answer was always like, but that's just the way it's done, right? This, this movie with this star is, you know, this amount of marketing and, you know, 10 goes to this channel and 10 to this channel. And this change, I'm like, but what if that channel, what isn't working? How do we know if that channel's even getting us tickets? Like, you're spending five or ten million dollars and they're like, no, no, it's just the way it is.
And the next movie comes out and then the other movie studio, they got the formula of like. And it's just. There's no, like, they're not really. And there's no analyzing of the data of is that actually working? So I always felt like from a marketing perspective, they were rolling the dice. And then on Friday they were like, this all weekend being like, come on, let our movie do. Okay, so.
[00:32:28] Speaker B: But in reality is that same feeling is what happens in the corporate world. Like, they do a product launch and then they cross fingers. Let's hope that it works.
[00:32:40] Speaker A: If it doesn't, they're like, but we spent $20 million on market.
[00:32:43] Speaker B: It's not our fault. Yeah, no, that's where all the, the labels come. No, we, we use this, we use that, and it's not our fault.
[00:32:53] Speaker A: Wow, that's amazing. All right, so somebody's listening to this and they're like, man, I, we, we need you. How do they get in touch with you?
[00:32:59] Speaker B: Or propelling tech, like the, the best way. Like, meaning propellingtech.com easy way to find us. We have our LinkedIn page as well. Propelling tech.
And even myself, Alejandro Martinez, they can find me in LinkedIn or alejandro.martinezpropellingtech.com as well.
[00:33:19] Speaker A: I love it. All right, well, I always like to end every conversation with three questions. So if you could go back in time and give your younger self a piece of advice. What would you give and why?
[00:33:31] Speaker B: So that's a difficult one because I always say if you go back and change something then you're no longer the same person.
[00:33:40] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:33:42] Speaker B: The person that you are is made of the journey that you took. But I always say if I believe there is something won't change that much. That maybe will have a tremendous impact right now on me is we got social media and networking technologies and all that.
So I stop like just by thinking that you have someone on LinkedIn, adding as a contact that is your contact and it doesn't mean anything like limiting. There is this phrase that says it doesn't matter who you know, what matters is who knows you.
[00:34:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:20] Speaker B: And in order for someone to know you, you really need to create connections and bonds with people, take care of, of, of the people itself.
So that would be my advice to my younger self. Like a taker of the people. Like meaning pay attention to what they need, how you can help, how you can support.
Know everything is a transaction based like le meaning is I don't know, a happy birthday, a day someone is sick. Like whatever it is. But it's showing care that you care about them.
[00:34:57] Speaker A: Just treating people like humans.
[00:34:59] Speaker B: Yeah. So it doesn't become like a social media and the sixth degree connection.
I don't know everyone is used right now.
[00:35:06] Speaker A: I like that. That's. You know, in Hollywood we had the, the, there was a phrase that said you treat everyone with respect on the way up because those are the people that are going to be helping you when you're on your way down. Especially, especially in the acting. Right. Because you'll be a top star for a while but you can't ever maintain that and eventually you'll start to come back down. And the guys that were absolute narcissistic jerks on the, and they, you know, the career would top out and they start to fall down and they'd be asking for work and people are like I don't want to work with you.
[00:35:34] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:35:35] Speaker A: So what, what belief or mindset shift has had the biggest impact on your success?
[00:35:44] Speaker B: I would say like, like meaning for me the, the, the biggest thing on everything is challenging the, the why of things and that's I think the learning aspect. So for me, one of the things that changed everything on all my life, I live in London for one year and I remember when I was living there, I was working in Harro Cafe in a bar in the night and the manager there was saying after living in London, you're going to be able to live in any city in the world. And I was like, oh man, London is so easy to live. Everything is documented, everything has signs like go to Africa, go to other countries.
[00:36:26] Speaker A: And you go to Egypt.
[00:36:28] Speaker B: But living in London gave me the exposure to the need of learning from cultures and learning other things.
And I have it, I mean, in that traveling mindset of always trying to go to different places, it, it created a mindset of being out of my comfort zone that I think is, is one of the ones that is, is giving me success.
[00:36:56] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good one. And it's interesting you say that because I think there are the younger generations that have been raised up in sort of, you know, kid gloves is the phrase we use here in the States.
But it's almost like an avoidance. If it makes you uncomfortable, you need to avoid it all costs, right? And then like the over here, it's like, oh, if you're uncomfortable, those are not good feelings. So you don't want to do that. But how are you going to grow and learn otherwise? Right?
[00:37:24] Speaker B: And, and that's really the feeling of learning because when, when you don't know something, the first feeling you get is like, oh, like I'm really bad at this. And it can be, I don't know, on doing an exercise, going to the gym, taking a new sport, executing data and AI. When you start, you don't perform. But that's the feeling of learning, knowing that you don't know.
If you just start little by little, you will see the gain on how you're doing.
But of course, going through that moment of oh my God, I'm bad at this is hard because it's kind of a self rejection of.
[00:38:09] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:38:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:10] Speaker A: Well, we're especially, you know, the, the most of us going through education, you're like, oh, if you get things wrong on the test the first time, like, whoa, you know, so we think, oh, I got to get it right the first time. Which is, that's not how the work. There's a, a business mentor I follow, and he said something. Well, I saw him speak one time and he said embrace the suck is what he called it. He said when you, anytime you try something new, you're gonna suck at it.
And you just have to keep sucking at it because the longer you suck at it, eventually you'll suck so little you're actually good.
[00:38:41] Speaker B: Yeah, well, in fact, there is this thing that they say entrepreneurship is, is kind of opposite to being a good.
[00:38:50] Speaker A: Student in a Way that's absolutely true.
[00:38:53] Speaker B: Because at the end is you get used to getting good grades. So like always getting success.
Entrepreneurship is the opposite. Like meaning you don't get the right success. Like you're not going to get the things right in the first time.
So it's easier for someone that is used to fail and come back always from the failure to return to that. Because at the end is the entrepreneurship is kind of a failure journey and how you find success in that failure journey the rather always used to get success and getting sometime failure and saying oh like let me. This is not for me.
Like you can break it like the the whole course but in reality people that are less motivated to get higher grades are the ones that are yeah, like entrepreneur.
[00:39:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Entrepreneurship's almost the the opposite entrepreneurship. The only way you can figure out the answer is to get it wrong.
[00:39:54] Speaker B: Yeah, well like, like the meaning basically is you're always looking for ways to how do things differently or how why we do it this way, how you do it in in a different way. You're not really executing on the task you're challenging.
Why I need to do it. That that's the other piece like I think was Plk that was saying like innovation come from lazy people. Like at the end if you're it's like oh like I don't want to execute this task. You start looking for ways on how you avoid that does that's where you start grading.
[00:40:27] Speaker A: That's funny. All right, all right, last question. What's the best investment you've ever made in yourself?
[00:40:35] Speaker B: I mean recently.
I don't know. And basically was I think in late October last year.
I wasn't a believer of sleeping. Like I don't know. I always used to say like hey, I don't know you have time for certain things. Sleeping for me was like 4 hours, 5 hours maximum a day.
Eating, I don't know. I like everything that was nice.
Normally those nice things weren't really the healthy ones. So I started with with my wife taking into a journey of getting live awareness and for me was a game changer. And people were saying, I mean I lost 50 pounds in my last four months.
[00:41:19] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:41:20] Speaker B: And I was saying I wasn't really doing a diet or taking a diet.
I was just doing this thing of a lifestyle change where I started eating better, sleeping better, doing exercise.
And then suddenly for me wasn't really losing weight, was getting energy.
So for me the best investment like I mean in my productivity went up more than with AI. Like let me get to the end of the day and it's like having the same energy I was having at the beginning of the day.
Your mood changed. Like you can handle more difficult things through the day.
So for me has been the biggest investment I've met.
Just working with this culture in my last, I don't know, let's say, years on, on, on things.
[00:42:14] Speaker A: Wow, that's fantastic. Well, and Hondur, this has been a fantastic conversation. So much for your time. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate you being here.
[00:42:22] Speaker B: No, thank you for having me. Thank you, Travis.
