Sean: That's amazing. That is. And you've gone through so many acquisitions as well. I mean, my goodness, it must have made you a little bit busy going through all of those flips.

Evan: Well, look. If you're going to work for an early-stage company, let's call it for what it is, you know, the private equity or the VCs, the people who put money in are looking to monetize that in some way. And typically it's a sale or it's some form of IPO. And so it is kind of there is always a natural, whether you want to call it an exit or a call it, it's always a next chapter. And so this is my second company that's gone public. I've been to a couple of acquisitions and really there's just the next phase with an acquisition. You know, the company gets integrated, it moves normally into a bigger environment and that's a different challenge with a public company when you're pre, I guess pre IPO, flexible, agile, there's a lot more stimulus and once you go public, there's a lot more governance because you're now required to report to the public markets. So there's a lot more I guess management and compliance and other things that are required to kind of provide the connection back out into that type of operating environment. So it's just different. But you don't. I don't think you go and join early-stage companies unless you like to change, and that's your reference to Disney. If you don't like change and you don't like the fast pace, early-stage companies are certainly not the place you want to be because, I mean, our business is growing over 100% year on year. I mean, it's growing incredibly fast. We're hiring constantly. We're always moving and changing. And if that is not your thing, then certainly my business or many businesses like ours are not yours. But if you like to be doing something different all the time and always thinking about what can change can be improved and this is a great place to be and really show your value. Because if you can do good work, then it certainly floats to the top because you can really create value for a company.

- - -

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack

Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Leadership Stack Merch: https://leadershipstack.com/shop/

- - -

Evan Davidson

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evdavidson/

Website: https://www.sentinelone.com/

Sean: So you mentioned optimism being one of them, perhaps your favorite, your favorite one because that's the one you mentioned right off the bat. And I know very few people, very few people, thank God, who are pessimists. They'd like to call themselves realists these days. And how can I? I'm wondering if there is a way I'm not forcing this question. How can we kind of turn the table and flip the script, finally tell them, hey, you know what? If you keep on like this, I don't think a lot of good is going to come into your life. Is there a strategy for us to allow them to see that being an optimist or having good optimism is very valuable for them?

Devin: Yeah, that's a good thought. And really my response to that is that's why I wrote my book because the easy audience is the audience that says, I agree with everything you're saying. The difficult audience is the audience that says, I don't I don't know that I agree with what you're saying. Oh, well, allow me to make an argument, read the book, read the stories. Are you compelled to consider that maybe optimism is more important than being a pessimist or being a realist? And to see if I can persuade the tougher audience to recognize the importance of our values. And granted, there'll be some people who just will ignore the path that I'm on, and that's okay. But hopefully for those people out there saying I'm looking for some things that I can do that are easy, small, simple things that I can do that will make a positive difference, maybe in my personal life or in my professional life. And I'd love to try something out. I think my book could possibly help that kind of person.

Sean: Aside from optimism, Devin, what are some things people should learn or should get out of your book and apply to their lives?

Devin: Yeah. Let me start with what you just said, how can they apply it to their lives? So in the book, I outlined values, my priority values. Some people might call them core values, but they're priorities for me. But my book is really an invitation for you to discover what your values are, and what's important to you. So I share my values as maybe a template for others to plug in their values. For example, I write about kindness and what an important value that is to me, and gratitude and the importance of the value of service, and maybe thinking a little bit less about ourselves and more about others. I write about integrity, and I write a lot about my mother, who is probably for me the best personification of integrity. I write about communication and humility. And the last value I write about, it's the value of the initiative. If we don't have the drive or something to put one foot in front of the other, take that initiative. Everything else can be hollow. And so I share some thoughts about the importance of taking that first step. And maybe it's just a small step, but the importance of initiative and making positive changes in our lives.

- - -

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack

Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Leadership Stack Merch: https://leadershipstack.com/shop/

- - -

Devin Durrant

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/devin-durrant-a493906/

Website: https://thevaluesdelta.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DurrantDevin

Sean: Great coaches. What they do is coach, right? That's their job. That's what they do. 24 seven. They're thinking about how I can improve my team. Well, who's fit for this role? Where do we need to draft new talent? Right. Everything they're doing now, when you're in your business, especially when you started the business and you're president, CEO of your own organization, so you probably founded this business as well at the get-go. You don't have that luxury where you're just thinking about the team, team, team player, player, player. You're like doing accounting, you're doing legal, you're doing the sales work, you're doing account management, you're doing marketing, you're doing so many things. You're wearing so many hats that it eludes you to not to a fault, not to your fault. Even if you might want to coach, you might want to build your people, but you just don't have the time. And a lot of business people are there. I know I'm there in that position, so I guess this is kind of like a twofold question in a way. Where should you hire someone who will be a coach full-time? And how do you know, like if this person is going to coach or your business is interest or that person's interest alone? Because a lot of coaches have tendencies to coach for that person's interest, no longer for the business interest. And the second fold to this question is how do you coach your people now, now that your leader, your founder, you're doing so many things, how do you find time to do that?

Devin: I love the idea of being an entrepreneur. I think I was certainly born with an entrepreneurial spirit and as I grew up, I would mow lawns, and take care of people's property. Most of the work was fairly independent, running my own small businesses as a student. And then after my basketball playing days were over, I had an opportunity to work in corporate America. So to be part of a large, successful company by the name of the word perfect, and I enjoyed that time there. But I still had within me that entrepreneurial spirit to get out and start something on my own. And one thing led to another, and that happened. And so initially, just as you outlined, I was doing almost everything. I was a real estate investor, so I might buy a property and would mow the lawn, I would pull the weeds, would paint, would clean, would schedule subcontractors, would do the accounting, and from top to bottom. And one of the benefits there is I learned every aspect of the business and what needed to be done, really with the exception of maintenance. And so I recognized that my strength was not going to be in the maintenance area, so I'd have to hire someone to do that. And fortunately, I hired just the right guy for that role and the two of us began to grow the business. And so as the dollars would allow us to bring on more employees, that's certainly what direction we headed. I love the idea of building business, starting a business, but I think the expectation needs to be this is going to take all of me and it's going to be a rough and bumpy first few years till we get established and then as we can, I'm more conservative and as we can we'll add additional employees and will grow the business over time.

- - -

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack

Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Leadership Stack Merch: https://leadershipstack.com/shop/

- - -

Devin Durrant

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/devin-durrant-a493906/

Website: https://thevaluesdelta.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DurrantDevin

Accompany Mr. CEO at 22, Sean Si, who will talk about how leaders motivate their team, how you can deal when you hit rock bottom as a leader, what qualities you should look for in a manager and from your young employees, and more!

---

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack

Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Leadership Stack Merch: https://leadershipstack.com/shop/

Sean: I'm honored that you were able to tune in to the podcast before we were able to have this recording. Devin, so what I want to know I mentioned in the introduction from the courtroom, from the basketball court to conference rooms, that that phrase struck me. And how does it feel to be someone who plays on the basketball court? You know you got a lot of action going on. You got a lot of quick thinking, instinctive thinking going on to now conference rooms where you have to make sure you say the right words. You have to think a lot before you do anything and make sure that you're dressed up. And it's a lot slower than what you're used to. What happened in between and why decide to go now to conference rooms rather than the basketball court?

Devin:  Oh, that's an excellent question. Thanks for the opportunity, because I've found that over the years there are so many similarities between the competition that took place on a basketball court and the competition that takes place in the business world. And yes, you have to do a lot of thinking as an athlete. The same kind of thinking takes place in the boardroom or as you interact with customers, you have to be able to respond to what comes your way. And so there are a lot of similarities between the sports world and the corporate world.

Sean: That is amazing.

- - -

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack

Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Leadership Stack Merch: https://leadershipstack.com/shop/

- - -

Devin Durrant

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/devin-durrant-a493906/

Website: https://thevaluesdelta.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DurrantDevin

Sean: Right? Right. So we have this. The huge spectrum of what I am is from snake oil, which is not real. And they're just saying AI because it's hot to companies selling software that has some form of machine learning in there, branding it as AI to companies who are really doing AI like Google and Microsoft and all these companies doing it in the back-end to ChatGPT, which is. It's so obvious that it is an eye. What do you think would be the next maybe 2 to 3 years of I as we graduate, hopefully from this pandemic and we face the US recession that's looming 2 to 3 years? For me, the most advanced version of AI is ChatGPT right now. What do you think can happen?

Luke: So I think there is there are two different fields that I would want to touch on. The first is technical, I think everything's going to become multi-modal, something we actually talked about a little bit where images and text are taken together and these AI’s learn from both. So you could say, Here's a picture of my washing machine, what's wrong with it? Right. And it would know like the brand and the model and I tell you like the basic stuff like that's very near future. Yeah. I think near to mid future, like maybe five years we will have AI that analyzes our social life on a deep level, not social media, something that lives in our phones that says, Hey, your mom is stressed about something, She just sent you an email and I can tell by what she wrote that you should probably call her and ask her what's going on. It'll be this thing that is almost like a personal assistant that can read different emotions through all of our communications that come in and out. It can listen to a phone call and say, you need to call Client X because they really are. They sounded like they were really trying to get you to pitch them a new idea. Like you'll have this thing that kind of lives in your head. Yeah, not literally, but you'll have this thing that lives on your phone that listens to all your communications, reads all your communications and helps you navigate complicated social systems. And this is why humans were meant for very small social networks. 20 people, 50 people, tops.

Sean: Yeah.

Luke: Right now most people, we're navigating in the hundreds or even 1000 some people, and we're really bad at it. Even the best people are like they're operating at like 10%, right? Like, yeah, they're so below failure on it. Right? So tech like this, just imagines ChatGPT The combination is something that will make everyone really good at being social again, which I think is something that everyone is really craving right now because social media is kind of delivered the opposite. It's like anti-social media these days. I love it. Like I'm on Tiktok, I'm guilty. I'm not trying to be religious about things like turning off or disconnecting Instagram. Like I have an Instagram, right?

- - -

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack

Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Leadership Stack Merch: https://leadershipstack.com/shop/

- - -

Luke Arrigoni

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukearrigoni

Website: https://arricor.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lukearrigoni

If you are considering doing a hybrid work setup or if you are already running a hybrid work setup, here’s how you can make it work!

From a traditional business setting, many companies have now switched to a new practice called hybrid working. However, a hybrid work setup has its challenges as well. Not everyone is responsible and disciplined enough to work from home and still produce their best output.

As a leader, you must look for ways to make this arrangement work for you and your team. Tune in as Mr. CEO at 22, Sean Si shares how you can make the most out of a hybrid work setup only in this episode of the Leadership Stack!

---

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack

Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Leadership Stack Merch: https://leadershipstack.com/shop/

Sean: So we have human writers and bloggers right now, which as you mentioned earlier there, they're just going to be augmented in the work that they do with ChatGPT. They're not going to be replaced, which in my opinion, a lot of them who are mediocre might be replaced by ChatGPT. But those who are exceptional at their work, they're irreplaceable because they're going to be the ones maybe editing, augmenting the data to 2022 data depending on the industry they're writing for, right? So these bloggers are using a little bit more advanced data, a little bit more recent data, I should say. But really, when you look at the data now, everyone's using data from the Internet, right? I mean, it's out there. You're just collating it, saying it in a better way. Now I'm wondering what is going to be the future of thought leadership because it used to exist, right? I started digital Marketing in 2009 and there was not a lot of new stuff written about SEO during that time. So Moz was just beginning All these websites, Search Engine Journal, I think was just beginning. So all these thought leaders didn't exist during that time. And you could still be a trailblazer in terms of predicting what the next SEO thing is and stuff. But right now, I think that if people get lazy and they're just like, let's use ChatGPT and just edit it. What happens now to thought leadership? What are your thoughts about that?

Luke: So I think this is a really great point. I think it touches on one really big thing, which I'll just mention quickly and I'll move on to. I think your intended question is everyone's all worried that air is going to replace some more creative roles and is my belief that A.I. is a new paintbrush, it's not a new painter. And so the people that are mediocre at what they do are going to get replaced, and the people that are masters are going to be like, This is the new paintbrush for me.  Like that's it. AI is a brand-new tool. And it is possible that a tool can replace a mediocre person, but a tool doesn't replace the master. It just makes the master better at what they do. So I completely agree with that. As far as thought leadership goes. You know, I think my thinking is, you know, we talked about the embedding space and how ChatGPT as you talk, it goes more and more fine points. You start to talk and it starts in the city area of this embedding space. And as you talk more, it goes down to the house. I don't think at least not to maybe future eyes, but I don't think Chad will be able to get into the kitchen. Look, I think that there is a point that is so deep in your industry and everyone has a different industry, right? That you can go deeper than what an AI can go simply because AI is trained on the Internet. It's trained on this huge generic pot of information. Right? Not on something fine-tuned like your own human experience or your own knowledge.

- - -

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack

Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Leadership Stack Merch: https://leadershipstack.com/shop/

- - -

Luke Arrigoni

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukearrigoni

Website: https://arricor.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lukearrigoni

Sean: Yeah. What do you think about that? I mean Google, on the other hand, is saying hey, we don't encourage AI-produced content and we're going to crack down on it someday. And then there are these big banks in the US right now that are using ChatGPT to produce at least the base layer of their content. When I say base layer, it means the outline, it means the initial draft before they have a human edit and publish it. What do you think about this? Is it something that's sustainable? I mean, we see that ChatGPT is having outages sometimes because so many people are using it.

Luke: This is the fascinating part. Obviously, Google and other search engines, they're going to want to play a cat-and-mouse game with this right where they're going to say, we're going to eventually find out if something is AI generated and then shut it down. But I think that they're going to come to regret that decision because, at the end of the day, people are looking for information. And if someone has generated information that solves a legitimate problem, whether it's AI-generated or not, like whether that content is there, that's something that people are going to search for and look for. So I think at a certain point I get why Google is saying things like, don't overwhelm our system with all this AI-generated content, but there will come an inflection point where that is what people want. People are going to want to figure out how to search across all the possible knowledge, even AI-generated knowledge, to find what is real and true. So it's kind of a tossup, I think, for now, advise, do it. You know, I'm no one's marketing strategist, but I really actually think it'll be very difficult for Google to detect what is human, what is A.I. It comes to the written word. There's a lot of stuff around the media, like deep fakes. Those are easier to detect when it comes to written words, though, that's going to be much harder because you have at least in native English speakers, there's a huge range of capabilities for writing, right? Like I went to high school with some people who didn't know how to write and they were like 15 right? Like there are some people that just like you could not say, hey, this is poorly written its AI. And you also couldn't say this is so well written and say it’s AI. And so I think that there's going to be a huge challenge there. And I think Google is largely bluffing when they say they're going to be able to detect it. I just don't think they'll be able to. And I think they're going to put the resources in to do it because once again, people are going to want information. And if ChatGPT comes up with it versus a human, I don't think anyone really cares.

- - -

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack

Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Leadership Stack Merch: https://leadershipstack.com/shop/

- - -

Luke Arrigoni

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukearrigoni

Website: https://arricor.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lukearrigoni

How do you manage missed deadlines? How do you make sure that your team would hit deadlines 99% of the time? Watch this!

It is not uncommon for people in a team to miss deadlines. And if deadlines have to be adjusted, here is a system you can do.

Join Mr. CEO at 22, Sean Si, as he shares this system that can help you and your team serve your clients as best as you can within deadlines! Tune in only in this episode of the Leadership Stack!

---

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack

Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Leadership Stack Merch: https://leadershipstack.com/shop/