Ep810: Dr. Gilbert Guzman – The $1M Lesson I Learned by Not Launching My Startup

Andrew Stotz 00:02
Hello, fellow risk takers, and welcome to my worst investment ever. Stories of loss. To keep you winning in our community, we know that to win an investing you must take risk, but to win big, you've got to reduce it. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. And I want to thank my listeners from Texas for joining today, fellow risk takers, this is your worst podcast hosts, Andrew Stotz from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guest, Dr Gilbert. Guzman, Gilbert, are you ready to join

Dr. Gilbert 00:41
the mission? I'm excited. Ready to ready to launch this thing? Yeah,

Andrew Stotz 00:45
let's go. We're gonna have some fun. I'm looking forward to it. So I'll introduce you to the audience. So Dr Guzman is a business strategist, systems thinker and founder of intra q Ai a SaaS solution to eliminate knowledge gaps within the workplace. And he's also recently an author of atomic impact, with a Doctorate in Business and experience in leading large teams, he helps organizations boost productivity through practical systems built for real world constraints. He works. His work bridges people, data and technology for lasting operational success. Gilbert, take a moment and tell us about the unique value you are bringing to this wonderful world.

Dr. Gilbert 01:36
Yeah. Thanks, Andrew. Well, you know, I think I'm, I'm one of those people that kind of gives that answer, of, you know, somewhat cliche of, you know, I can do everything. And being a lifetime learner, I've always been that person that spends a lot of time trying to know how everything works, and kind of this end to end world and end to end process. And so with my newly released book, one of the things that I've been focusing on is, how do we change this world of productivity? And I think the value I bring from that is with an ever changing world, AI is on the come up, we know that there's a high dependency on technology. Through that kind of lens, there's this, this opportunity to kind of maybe take a few steps back and look at the world of productivity differently and apply some of the basic principles that exist within our organizations that aren't necessarily considered when we talk about optimization, efficiency, effectiveness and enhancement. So I think being able to bring in some of my knowledge and experience and really share that with the world is really what brings value from at least my seat.

Andrew Stotz 02:46
And let's talk about your book. I've gone through it a bit to try to understand your message and what you're bringing out there, but maybe first you can just explain why you decided to write this book, and then maybe after that, we can get into why someone should read this book.

Dr. Gilbert 03:01
Yeah, yeah. So it all started when I was going through my doctorate. I think it was my third course. It was called the fundamentals of productivity, and that's where I had come across Deming, and learned a lot about the red bead experiment, the willing worker. And through that, I, you know, I've always been an operational person. I've worked in human resources. And hence the reason, you know, in my intro and kind of bio, I connect operations and human kind of that human capital round from the HR perspective. But one of the things that really touched me was I've always been in love with productivity and learning about Deming and the systems that he generated, the frameworks and the theories that are relevant today, that aren't necessarily used in kind of a formal, formal perspective that allowed me to kind of Think about, how do I grow Demings message and philosophies to the modern, modern world. And so as I was going through my doctorate, Deming actually became the framework, the conceptual framework for my dissertation. And as I was going through that, I said, You know what? I need to put more beyond my dissertation on paper, and at the same time, I fell in love with the movie Oppenheimer, and that movie kind of opened my mind. That movie opened my mind to the world of physics beyond what I learned in high school, beyond what I did in undergrad, and being able to see something as small as an atom turn into, you know, very deadly weapon. And even today, from a nuclear perspective, we can power whole cities. We can power submarines that don't have to surface for months on end. And through that lens, I said, productivity is my passion. I like science. I like what I learned in Oppenheimer and. And is there a way to consider from an atomic perspective, the small things that we do in our organizations today that can lead to massive results? Right? The Atom being split, nuclear fission, you know, control rods, all of these mechanisms within the world of quantum theory being applied to an atomic bomb. Can we find results in the world of work and productivity with the things that already exist within our organizations? And part of my dissertation was focusing on covid, like everybody else who went through a doctorate or doctoral program during covid and dealing with the great resignation, part of that was, you know, the phenomena that I had studied and tied in the world of systems and dimming. And through that lens, I was able to learn a lot that the workforce itself has changed, but the demands of customers and consumers don't. And so as we embed technology, we insert technology, you know, AI gets added into the operational framework of these organizations. We have an opportunity to consider, and I'm going to say, the investments that we put, because we know that there's investments being added by way of technology, but not so much on the labor aspect, and we know that labor, most of the time, is the most expensive line on your P and L, right? We know that if you have a large workforce, it's going to cost you a lot of money to maintain that workforce and then ultimately produce levels of productivity that meet the demand of the organization and our customers. And so knowing that there was this lacking workforce, whether it was caused by covid and people leaving their industries and not necessarily returning, or the gig workforce, the gig economy increasing, and then you layer on the great resignation the workforce that we depend on to meet the demands of our customers changed. But the major question I had was is, how do we how do we take something very small, the things that our teams are already doing, whether we decide not to invest in human capital, or we think that there's an opportunity to eliminate positions, because we answered this technology, how do We take the small contributions that they make and create something meaningful out of them, and make sure that the contributions that they do have are relevant to the world of productivity, so we can meet the demands of our customers and consumers.

Andrew Stotz 07:35
It's interesting about the great resignation, because I don't think that happened in Asia because we didn't have, we don't have central governments that have tons of money that lavish it on, you know, that they don't pay out anything. So there was no major government support, and so everybody was trying to hang on to their jobs at the time of covid. So it's interesting. You know, the difference is there. Let's talk about, what do you mean by productivity? Because I know you talk a little bit about that, and sometimes, when I look at the world, I think, wow, so productive. When I look at, for instance, the production of this, you know, iPhone that I have, you know, it's incredible, incredible level of productivity that goes into them. And then when I look at the productivity of the education system of the US specifically, I think, what a disaster of productivity. And then sometimes I look at, as I was just talking to my students recently, I said, you know, when I took French back in seventh grade, you know, there was, there was a limit as to how much I could get in my head. I didn't really enjoy the topic very much, but, you know, I was able to get something out of it. But I wonder for a kid now, many decades later, are they able to get French into their head a lot faster and more efficiently, or pretty much the same? So what is productivity and why, you know, why do you talk about productivity? Yeah,

Dr. Gilbert 09:03
so I talk about productivity, and at least considering, from the normal kind of formula, right? That outputs divided by inputs, whatever you input, the effectiveness, or even the efficiency of producing the results. those outputs actually tell us how productive we are, right? And we know that that normal formula of outputs divided by inputs, to me, is outdated, right? And I think because the concept of productivity, even just that simple formula, doesn't necessarily apply everywhere, right? And I think you just gave those examples of, you know, the iPhone, we know that we're productive there. But when I think about productivity, it's what as well. I think about the investment that companies, organizations, organizational leaders make into the organization to then create those outputs. And so with that realm of productivity is. So how do we get out? How do we get out what we need from the investment? And within my book, I talk a lot about productivity to the degree of actually, I kind of generated a new formula to count what I call the chain reaction coefficient that helps drive a different level of measuring productivity beyond the outputs divided by inputs, kind of formula, because there's, there's primary benefits within an organization of what you're doing, their second secondary benefits, which may be, we've boosted morale, right? But how do you measure those things to create an actual number in and actually account for everything that our teams are doing. Because when I look at a system, usually and sometimes we can, you know, chalk a system up to being a process. A lot of people think about systems linearly, step one through 10, or this is connected to this area, x is connected to y, and then this produces that outcome. And through the lens of atomic impact, can we account for those small, you know, what are the primary benefits we get out of what are we doing, what we're doing, and then what are some of the secondary benefits? And then what's our network reach? How do we reach more people? Because I, you know, depending on the organization. You know, I worked in a big box retailer for a while, and we always said, if you ever want information to die, give it to this level of person. And that, you know, kind of showed that network reach. Sometimes we're killing people's time. We're taking time away from people where they could otherwise be more productive or provide more inputs in a certain area that actually is meaningful, but through the world of KPIs and measurements, we get tied up and chasing the number, and then we forget about the inputs the work that we should be doing to ultimately, you know, meet the demands of our customers. Or one thing I always say is sometimes we forget about the intent of our jobs, because we get so caught up in trying to turn a red box green right, get that check mark, meet that KPI, and we forget, oh, wait, I was actually supposed to do X, Y and Z, and so that kind of goes all the way back to the, you know, the chain reaction coefficient formula. Because if we can determine what our primary benefits are or secondary benefits from whatever we're inputting, whether it's a meeting, whether it's a, you know, schedule optimization, whether it's in a direct investment of technology, and then determine how that those primary and secondary benefits actually reach how far down the chain, then we get to drive productivity from a different level. And then, you know, the last piece of that formula is the direct investment, that can be time, that can be money, and that's all going to be dependent on determining what those primary and secondary benefits are to then layer them in to determine, you know, how do we actually meet the demands of what we're trying to do. So I think, I think that's kind of the world of productivity when I think about it.

Andrew Stotz 13:07
And maybe I'll just add in Dr Demings description of a system was a network of interdependent components that work together to try to accomplish the aim of the system for the audience out there that may not know that. And so we have, you know, lots of different systems, and let's say, in a business, what's interesting about what you've written is, you know, there's, there's a great book, in fact, it's over my shoulder, called atomic habits. And atomic habits talks about, what small changes can we make in our daily habits that could have significant, let's say exponential, impact on outcomes. And what I found interesting about your book was that it took that same kind of concept and said, Well, if we really are saying that the system is responsible for the majority of the output, not necessarily any one part or any one individual, then that means that there's a multiplying effect, or an exponential effect, if we could make some improvements on the system. And that just got me really excited when I read that, because I just felt like you made a little connection there. And I have some consulting clients that I work with, and, you know, I do work with them about the system, but the idea is, like, how, where is the leverage point that we can focus on? So I think that really unique about what you talked about in the book. So maybe you can talk a little bit more about that, and let's, let's think about it for the listener right now, like something that they could how they could apply this in their life today.

Dr. Gilbert 14:48
Yeah, so I think referencing, and I did see atomic impact on atomic habits on your shelf back there, and you know, and I wanted to make sure to give you know, James clear his his full. Hours, because he did a phenomenal job with a atomic habits. And, you know, I wanted to look at it through the lens of dimming, right? And you know how dimming, Deming said that 94% of the problems, or, you know, in an organization, is the system. It's not the people. And I wanted to focus on the system, because as you start kind of opening your mind, especially if you read, read my book, and you start opening your mind up on how everything is connected, and whether it's people, resources, finance, technology, everything is so connected. But at the same time, you know that we can kind of blame, you know, we can blame the Wealth of Nations for this, that division of labor has kind of created these, these silos, if you will. And the organizations themselves are effectively a system, and they're somewhat disjointed, because not everybody's talking to each other to find those leverage points and and how do they leverage each other's knowledge, resources, whatever, whatever is necessary to come up with an answer. Because one thing I always see is a lot of people are great at identifying problems, but they're not necessarily great at finding the solutions to those problems. And through the system lens, we have an opportunity to leverage Demings thinking, systems thinking, even the, you know, the chain reaction coefficient, and slow down and determine, where are those leverage points, where are those atomic actions? And utilize those to see if, do we already have the answers to our problems in our organizations, but they're just, they're invisible, right? Or they're, they're, they're seen as not big enough solutions, because most people see big problems, so they assume that we need big solutions. And that's not always necessarily the case. That's, that's, you know, I think that's kind of grand thinking, if you will. But there's an opportunity to take in from my book some of the things, and one of the things that I do within the book is because I, you know, through the lens of the phrase atomic is, I reference a lot of physics, quantum theory, built on Oppenheimer and, you know, diving into quantum theory and trying to create analogies through the world of physics and how we got to Creating the atomic bomb and nuclear power, nuclear fission, and considering things like your control rods, right in our organizations, or at least in a nuclear reactor, we got to have control rods to control the power within that within that nuclear reactor, to make sure you don't have meltdown or we don't fizzle out. And so in my book, you can take some of those same concepts and reference them as tools to kind of push your organization and make sure that you have all of these leverage points within your organization today. So for example, the control rod aspect is, do you have control rods? Do you have things in your organization that help you monitor the progress that our teams are doing beyond the KPIs, beyond the performance reviews. And through that lens, I think if you take in the concepts of the atomic productivity theory, the chain reaction coefficient, fission actions, control rods, and think about, again, taking a couple steps back, and thinking about what exists in my organization today that I'm not currently leveraging, and then consider it doesn't take a lot of investment, right? It doesn't take a lot of investment, because most of the time it's already there. It's just being able to find it and identify it. Because with the world of technology, we want to move faster. We want people to produce results at, you know, a higher clip than ever before. Because demand is fast. The world is moving fast. So I think you can leverage a lot of that from my book.

Andrew Stotz 18:46
Yeah, and you reference Adam Smith. Now we're almost at the 250th anniversary of the publishing of the Wealth of Nations. And the quote related to division of labor that I think is interesting from the Wealth of Nations that you reference is the, he says, the greatest improvement in the productive powers of labor, and the greatest part, a greater part of the skill, dexterity and judgment with which it is anywhere directed or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labor. Now one, one of my takes on this, in fact, is that division of labor is a powerful element. And some people would say that that silos people because it puts them in their areas. But I would argue with that and say that actually, the workers who are, you know, divided up and working in the area of their expertise or their skills, they still want to communicate with other people in the business. They want to be part of a larger, you know, a larger outcome. But the problem, I think, is lazy managers, who then say, they just say, Well, I'm just going to reward you on this. Yes, and we're just going to focus on your output, and they don't get them involved. And as Dr Deming says, you know, if you ask me to wash this table, I can't do it, unless you tell me what this table is going to be used for, then I know how I need to contribute to that final outcome. So that's a little historical thing related to the Wealth of Nations. But what are your thoughts about? You know this about? Maybe it's managers laziness, managers trying to simplify but actually destroying. Or do they understand systems thinking? What's the state of managers these days, let's say in America.

Dr. Gilbert 20:43
Yeah, I think that's a good question, and I don't, I don't know if it's necessarily laziness, you know. And I think going back to Deming, you know, Deming said it's management's job to fix the system. And I think when we talk about that, a lot of managers are more so doing their job, and that may be pushing individuals. And actually, you know, how do you manage versus leading? How do you know, leading is influencing individuals to achieve the goal and use the systems, tools and resources, and management is making sure that they're using them and using them correctly. And I don't think it's necessarily laziness or anything to that degree. But I don't, I also don't think that when we onboard a new manager, we're not teaching them the systems, because we assume that they should already have that experience, or at least that knowledge. Because ultimately, if you're whether you're coming in, you know from an external hire or an internal hire, the assumption is you know how to do your job, and you know how to at least skill up so that. And I think once you layer in the concept of leadership, and, you know, driving individuals to use the tools, and then ultimately, you know, ultimately, drive them to to kind of drive results by influence, then I think that gives management that that world, but I think, I think the other thing is that that world of KPIs, and I am, I am a data fanatic. I will spreadsheet anyone to death. I love it. But often we get clouded in the narrative of the data, you know, and sometimes we get so, we get so tied up in chasing that number that we forget to actually push people through the system and ultimately make the system better. And then I think one other thing to layer on this, and chapter 13 in my book, is about psychological safety. And Dr Amy Edmondson of Harvard wrote, kind of coined this concept or phrase in 1999 and psychological safety is that ability kind of cultural within the organization, to where individuals don't have to be afraid to speak up or challenge people. And I think that bureaucracy or even the hierarchy sometimes gets in the way of people challenging the systems and saying, Hey, this is or isn't working. And most of the time, everything is linear when we think steps one through 10, but there's a lot of variables on the outside that are really driving the performance, you know, and, and I've, you know, previously, I've had some conversation with some some executives and mentioned, look, there's, there's results that are coming, and we think that the system itself is working, but there's a lot of other retooling and and kind of pivoting on the outside of that linear process that's been defined that's getting in the way. And so our managers are really managing not the linear process, but they're managing everything outside to kind of keep it in, you know, in at least a scope of understanding and relevance to achieve that respective goal.

Andrew Stotz 23:40
And in the book, you talk also about the about variation, and when we think about a system, it has many different components, and each of those components are have their own levels of variation of output. And I'd love it if you talk a little bit about your perspective on variation and how this fits in with your concept of atomic impact.

Dr. Gilbert 24:03
Yeah. So variation in my book, I use an orchestra metaphor, and I use Russ, a coffee a lot in there. And the thing about variation is, and when we talk about dimming and think about statistical process control, you know, we have our upper bound and lower bound, and if we're firing in between those two bounds, we're okay. The system is okay. But when we think about variation, there's that common cause and special cause. And the thing about variation is never, nothing is ever going to be 100% right, whether we go through a lean principle, Lean Six Sigma principle, you know, agile methodologies, whatever we think is going to drive us to that quality perspective, there's always going to be some sort of, you know, some level of variation. And so in my book, I use an orchestra metaphor, because an orchestra has a whole bunch of people firing in an orchestra itself is a system, and they're all firing at. At, you know, are playing their instruments rather at a, you know, different level, different notes, and it comes together. But you need that maestro, that kind of guides the orchestra, to actually make music. And that variation could be small levels of tone, small levels of, you know, tweaking the instrument itself to effectively achieve the results that we need, and so from a variation perspective, I think it's important to understand that common cause and special cause, because variation isn't always noise, right? Sometimes it is a signal that we do need to change. We do need to optimize. We do need to tweak the system to make it easier, make it better or actually meet the demands of our organization, or even the demands of the system itself. But that special and common cause variation is important, because if you don't understand that concept of variation, anytime you don't achieve, especially from the realm of KPIs and metrics, when you don't achieve 100% you assume someone did something wrong, or someone failed, and it's likely okay. It's within the realm of common cause variation. It's baked into the system. But we tend to take that variation and without definition of common or special cause variation. We tend to take that variation and point at the people we point at so and so didn't do X or so and so didn't, you know, produce the results or the productivity that they were supposed to have to ultimately produce 100 cars. And that variation tells us that sometimes it's going to be there. You're not always going to hit 100% but find that level that you're comfortable with. And it's just like my good guy, Bill bellow, says there's that acceptability versus desirability. Determine where you're at. And if you can find what's acceptable versus desirable and learn within that realm of variation, I think you'll you'll be okay

Andrew Stotz 26:58
with so many things go through my head. One of the things I have a story of when I worked for a particular boss who I thought was really brilliant guy, he hired some of the top analysts in the stock market, including myself on that team, and we really were all pretty intense and very good in our areas, but he never had a common aim for us, and so we never really made the impact. And then I think about some you know, think about an orchestra. You have people that have spent their whole life learning how to play one of the many instruments. So there's an obsession, there a division of labor, but a common aim. Think of one of my favorite documentaries, the last dance, yeah, with the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen and all of these guys who each had an obsessive nature in a particular area, but there was a common aim. And I'm just watching a new documentary called Becoming Led Zeppelin and each of the four members had an obsession in an area, but there was a common aim. And so when I think about the division of labor, I think about somebody recently said, You sound like a workaholic. I said, Don't insult me. I am far my obsession goes far beyond that. Yeah, that sounds painful, but I spent every single waking moment of my life obsessed on a couple tiny little areas of this little world. So I just thinking about that as you were talking about the orchestra. And you know what I loved about Dr Deming was the idea of, how do we get the most out of people? You know, I want to be on that team. I want to be, you know what? What's great about watching becoming Led Zeppelin, or watching an orchestra, or watching the last dance is, you just see the whole thing is a combination of this selfish obsession in one area and bringing that together with a group of people to accomplish a common aim. What more? What more do you want in this world?

Dr. Gilbert 29:16
Yeah, and it's kind of like the concept of the willing worker, right? And I think Deming puts it best is nobody, nobody wants to go, no, like, like, and I've never experienced this. So whether I've been frustrated at work or not, I've never woken up and said, I'm going to do a bad job, right? You could be frustrated whatever, but you end up going to work, right? But you're limited by that system to produce the results that you're supposed to do. But if people understand their aim of the system, you got to know right? And that's beyond knowing what their job is and knowing how to do their job, it's what's the end result. And I think sometimes that does get lost in translation of, you know, translation of being able to. Tell people, here's your contribution, regardless of your level, but here's where we need to go and where we want to go and and if we can do that, I think you do you get results like the like the Chicago Bulls, yeah,

Andrew Stotz 30:15
I do want to get to your story of your worst investment ever. I'm going to be interested to hear that, but yeah, before we do that, so we've talked about systems. We talked about variation, and your what you've talked about in the book, there's one last topic that I think is interesting for you to talk a little bit about, which is what you call the chain reaction coefficient. And maybe you can explain a little bit to us. What is it? How do we think about it? How do we employ this thought?

Dr. Gilbert 30:44
Yeah, so the chain reaction coefficient formula is, we'll call it a mathematical formula. There's a little bit of subjectivity, because it forces you to go and find your benefits. But the formula itself is primary benefits plus secondary benefits multiplied by point seven or 70% because we're conservative, we'll say we're a little conservative on the secondary benefits aspect, because the primary benefits may be a save saving of time, or you save more money, right? And you know that that's a primary benefit when you identify your atomic actions. Those secondary benefits are those small things like a morale boost. And how do we how do we account for those? And then we add in. Then we are multiplied by network reach. And how far does what we're doing reach your team? And then we divide by your direct investment, and that direct investment pieces multiplied by 1.5 because often we know this. In the world of business, if we think we're going to invest or have to spend $100,000 we end up spending $150,000 because something didn't go the way as planned, or we can, you know, layer in inflation or something there. But once you define the primary benefits, secondary benefits, that network reach and the direct investment, you get a number. And so within my book, I have a matrix, and you're going to come up with a pretty most of the time, a small number, but anything that's greater than five, and in my book, I'd use a ratio five to one. Anything that's greater than five to one, we consider that atomic and atomic action. So you're going to say, currently, today, I have a direct investment of eight hours. I have my network reach of 12 people, and I'm taking 12 hours of time, but what's the benefit we get out of that? And then when we talk about the kind of end result, if we were to change that to kind of an asynchronous type of connection point, then we fall into the realm of we're getting the same material. We can expand this report out mechanism from an asynchronous connection point beyond the original 12 people, and we've reduced it to 10 minutes of input from, you know, from those original 12 people. And now we've saved time. And then when we talked about that time, of that direct investment, at this point, when we talked about that direct investment now our ratio was a lot smaller or a lot larger, and that impact is, we, you, we 10x we 12x the impact from those atomic actions. So the way to use it is, it forces you to go see what's in your systems, what's in your organization. That people are doing every day, and I actually mentioned this in the book, is every now and again, go and sit with your best performers. Don't ask any questions, just observe, see what they do differently, because they're likely spending time working through some sort of atomic action that's helping produce that result and makes them a lot more effective. So when we talk about the chain reaction coefficient, this matrix tells us, or at least allows and guides us. Rather, there's things that we're doing in our organizations today, and when we go back to that concept of productivity that are killing time, it's, you know, it's toxic, and most of the time for sake of doing it anyway. Sometimes we hold an hour long meeting and we report out things that could have been sent in an email or, you know, could have been a quick phone call or even a text message. And because we're killing so much time, if you use this chain reaction coefficient to determine what you're already doing in your organization, that's going to produce, you know, either the same results, or massive results, without killing time, then you're giving time back to your to your teams to then ultimately create more inputs and provide their efforts where it truly needs to be.

Andrew Stotz 34:51
Yeah. And I think in the simplest way of expressing that, we can just say if systems, if system is the majority. Already, you know the impact on the output mainly comes from modifying or improving the system. Then the question is, what activity within the system will produce the biggest output? And I believe that's really where you're getting at with this chain chain reaction coefficient concept, and I thought that was really helpful. And I think I was just thinking about one of my clients that, you know, that's actually the question I'm going to take to them next time I meet them, it's like, what is the one thing in this system that we can change and fix and improve that can have the biggest impact? Yeah, so that's a great one. And for the listeners and viewers out there, you can go to atomic impact book.com and learn more about it. He's also got Gilbert's giving you a chance. You can buy the book there. You can also get the first chapter there, so you can learn a little bit more about it, but definitely fascinating, and it's interesting to learn about it from you. Is there any last thing you want to share about the book before we move into your worst investment ever?

Dr. Gilbert 36:11
No, nothing else. I think, you know, it's excited to kind of verbally share it. You know, I've had some small conversations with everybody, but, you know, go, definitely go and get a copy of the book. I think, I think you'll enjoy it, especially the kind of, I wouldn't say they're quirky references to physics, but at least, kind of take your mindset away from business itself, and then think about these same type of behaviors that we could apply to our organizations today. Existed in a completely different domain, a completely different field, and we created nuclear energy from it. So with that, that's all I have.

Andrew Stotz 36:45
Well, now it's time to show your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment thinking it will be, tell us a little bit about the story leading up to it, yeah, and then tell us what was your worst investment.

Dr. Gilbert 36:56
Yeah. So my worst investment is going to be very interesting, because it's not necessarily the financial investment, it's time, and most of the time, I think from a business perspective, and I'm a rusher, I'm a very impatient person, but when it's come to an investment and an idea that I have, I gave too much time to really a couple ideas, but I'll give you the example of one is I had an idea for a portable charging device that would be dispensed by way of a vending machine, and my mind went to red box. You know, this was roughly 1213, years ago, my mind went to red boxes. You go and get a DVD, you can take it out, watch it, and you put it right back in. And my mind went to, how do I, how do I build something like that and put, you know, from a business perspective, I can take a portable charger and you return it, it plugs it in and recharges it, and it sells, sells right back to another person. And you know, you reuse an inventory, and that investment of time of waiting, I'd lost out, because if any of you travel today, there's a kiosk like machine in airports. And my whole business plan was airports, universities, movie theaters, places where individuals needed a lot of their phone, right? They needed to use their phone frequently, and we know that everyone's phone dies and in an airport, and so that convenience of creating something like this was my idea. But the company fuel rod came out, and they actually did it, and I by waiting and investing that waiting period I missed out. Doesn't mean I can't still kind of venture into the market, right? But they will have, and do have first mover advantage, and it's the same concept. There's not much of a differentiation you can provide to that respective market. But I'd say that was my worst investment ever. And,

Andrew Stotz 38:54
and how would you summarize the lesson that you learned from that

Dr. Gilbert 38:59
you got to dive in? And I think, I think, you know, even with your opening you got to take risk, but at some point you got to minimize risk. And, you know, and I that's what I did with starting intro q Ai is, as I buckled down, hunkered down, buckled up, and dove in and said, I'm going to take this risk and get going, especially in the world of AI, you know, creating an AI SaaS product. It moves quick, right? I think we're into the world of agentic AI and generative AI is still relevant, but that's not the topic these days. And so what I learned from that was you can't be afraid and trying to growing to being a business executive, you learn that you can't be a risk averse leader. Sometimes you have to take risk. And growing up, my entire life, I've always been risk averse. It's, I don't want to jump from here to there, you know, I don't want to go swimming in a lake where I know there's, you know, venomous snakes and stuff. I don't really want to do that. And so that held on to me, and I think that was that kind. Of investment, of waiting and being risk averse, really taught me that, look, you're holding yourself back, right? You're holding yourself back. So I learned to jump in, do what you need to do, stay up late, work hard, do the research that you need to do, and get things going, and then ultimately everything will come to fruition.

Andrew Stotz 40:19
Yeah, yeah. And I would you know that it's a great story, and I one of the lessons I've learned over the years. And I think the book, The Lean Startup, is a great one that helps us understand the concept of a minimum viable product, and when, when we the biggest mistake that people make in starting up is not bringing your product to market. And as Reid Hoffman said, if you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've started too late. And so I recently developed a new service called the profit Boot Camp, where I help mid size family businesses double profits in 12 months, guaranteed or 100% of their money back. And I developed this system originally by testing it out with my own business. So I tested out with my coffee business and managed to double the profits, and then I tested it out with another private business that I managed to get as a client, and what I saw was that I needed to improve a lot of things. I was able to achieve the goal, but there was a lot of improvements. So I spent about six months improving on that, and today I'm should be signing with my third client with that, and now I can see how I can really I've improved every part of it, and now it's ready to scale. And so the idea of testing your idea with the market is such a critical component of this idea of diving in too, you know? So,

Dr. Gilbert 41:44
yeah, yeah.

Andrew Stotz 41:47
So based on what you learned from that story and what you continue to learn in your life, let's imagine a young man or woman you know, who's excited about an idea like you had there, and what would be one action that you'd recommend for them to take to avoid suffering that same fate.

Dr. Gilbert 42:08
I would have to say, don't be afraid to fail. I can tell you with intra q Ai itself. And I know that's kind of a cliche answer, but I can, I can tell you with intro Q, AI, I started in one kind of realm and path, and learned that that path was already crowded, and I decided to do further research to find how do I not have to change my MVP, and how can I keep the course structure and go beyond what, what this already crowded market is doing. So don't be afraid to fail and even iterate, you know. And once I think to your point, Andrew is getting things to market and finding out. Does this make sense, and is it relevant? Because often we do get scared of the big names, the big guys, the Googles of the world, and we think that they would otherwise crush you. But you know, there's you don't have to be horizontal. You can go vertical. You can find a niche and spend your time there. So if you have to iterate, and maybe you don't call those iterations failures, but if you can apply the at least the focus to know that you will have to iterate and likely call it a fail at some point. Don't be afraid of it. Don't be afraid of it, but maintain the course, and I think you'll be able to see it

Andrew Stotz 43:30
through. One of the things that I when I hear people complain about capitalism, and they say, Oh, this, there's so many rich people, and they're so mega rich, like, you know, you know, Jeff Bezos as an example, I said, you're looking at the wrong end of capitalism. You're looking at a very small number that made it to the success. But where capitalism's true power happens is the millions of people who go out of business every single year because they can't bring value to the market. They're pivoting, they're iterating, they're trying everything, and they can't make it. It could be their product doesn't bring value to the market. It could be they run out of resources. It could be they don't have the skills. It could be they got ripped off. It could be they hired the wrong people. No matter what it is, the market is brutal, and if that's the reason why bringing our products and services to the market as fast as possible, to see, you know how we can pivot to bring that value, that is the the crushing brutality of capitalism, yet, what makes it so great for society?

Dr. Gilbert 44:50
Yeah, definitely a paradox.

Andrew Stotz 44:51
Sorry, just got up on my soapbox there. That's

Dr. Gilbert 44:55
okay. That's okay. Okay. I love it. Yeah.

Andrew Stotz 44:57
So let's talk about resources. What's a resource, either of yours, or any other resource that you'd recommend for our listeners?

Dr. Gilbert 45:06
Yeah, so I would, I would definitely say my book, you can definitely use that as a resource. And even on my website, I have, you know, a few resources that come supplemental on my website. But to go beyond that, I really think Demings out of the crisis. I think Demings out of the crisis, because if you can figure out how to apply systems thinking to your life, to your work life, even you know personal or work life, and if you can find a way to apply systems thinking to those areas. It'll change the entire way you view life, society, work, and you'll start becoming a little more solution oriented. Because I think the relevance of the crisis being written, you know, over 3030, plus years ago, makes it very relevant today, but it's missed, right? It's often missed because people are trying to move a lot faster than what we'll call the old times, but it's relevant. There

Andrew Stotz 46:15
is a legend. Look at this one. That's what's crazy. Is look at

Dr. Gilbert 46:20
his. Did he sign that for you? Yep, yep, oh, man,

Andrew Stotz 46:24
1990 so he was 90 years old at that time, but amazing experience of my lifetime.

Dr. Gilbert 46:30
I was, I was born, I would so that was October 2. I was shoot six months old.

Andrew Stotz 46:41
Yeah, and I was just 24 in amazing experience. All right, last question, what is your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Dr. Gilbert 46:52
So I'd say my number one goal for the 12 months, or at least in the next 12 months, is to really get atomic impact, to take off and, you know, and kind of a parallel universe, the same with entry q Ai. I think between both of these, it had me focused and stay, stay true to course. And, you know, I'm a lifetime learner, so it'll give me something to be busy, especially anyone who goes through a doctoral program. You learn that after you're done and you're like, what are key? What do I do? I have time and so, but in the next 12 months, I think launching those two to the moon will definitely be my goal. And you know, it's going to be being able to speak with individuals like you, you know, be able to reach your audience, and then even beyond, you know, my goal is, minimally, to take atomic impact and intro q Ai, but specifically atomic impact, and create speaking engagements and workshops to kind of reinvigorate, not only dimming, but even the concepts that I've kind of developed within atomic impact, to just change the way we work, to change the way we work

Andrew Stotz 47:59
Great Well, ladies and gentlemen, you can say that you heard it first here as as Dr Guzman becomes more and more famous and successful in what he started, you're going to hear it on other podcasts, and you're going to hear it all over. So get the book. Learn more about it, see how you can apply atomic impact into your life. Listeners, there you have it, another story of loss to keep you winning. Remember, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. And as we conclude, Gilbert, I want to thank you again for joining this mission. And on behalf of AES dots Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Dr. Gilbert 48:43
Nothing. Go, go split some atoms. You know, I appreciate you having me on Andrew, it's been a pleasure. And, you know, look forward to the future. Well,

Andrew Stotz 48:52
that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our Well, fellow risk takers, let's celebrate that. Today, we added one more person to our mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz saying, I will see you on the upside. You.