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The First Million Is Always The Hardest
The First Million Is Always The Hardest podcast is your introduction to the mindset and mechanics behind success. In this podcast, host Bo Kemp breaks down why the first million —whether in dollars, impact, or purpose — is always the hardest milestone to achieve.
The First Million Is Always The Hardest
Building Tomorrow: Workforce, Innovation & the Industries Shaping Our Future
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Video Version: https://youtu.be/PqDVKP7KbJY
Building tomorrow’s industries starts with rebuilding today’s workforce. In this dynamic dinner-table episode, host Bo Kemp brings together three leaders from engineering, construction, and aerospace to unpack the talent challenges and opportunities defining the next decade of American industry.
From emerging fields like AI and cryogenics to cornerstone sectors like housing construction, this conversation explores the skills, training systems, and innovative workforce strategies needed to meet the moment.
Together, Bo, Eugene, Luis, and John dive into the workforce gaps threatening growth in both advanced technology and essential infrastructure, how AI, automation, and new materials are reshaping talent needs across engineering, aerospace, and construction, the real-world obstacles employers face in finding — and developing — the next generation of skilled workers, creative, scalable solutions for training, apprenticeship, and career pathways that can unlock growth at regional and national levels, what communities, companies, and policymakers must do now to prepare for a rapidly changing economic landscape, and why aligning industry, education, and workforce systems is key to powering America’s most promising new opportunities.
This episode is for leaders, builders, and problem-solvers who know the future won’t be created by technology alone — but by the people prepared to operate, maintain, and innovate within it.
At a moment when breakthrough industries are accelerating faster than our talent pipelines, this candid discussion offers clarity, urgency, and a path forward.
In this episode, I sit down with leaders for building engineering, for construction, and conversation on the skills, systems, and solutions we need to unlock growth from advanced technologies like AI and cryogenics to critical sectors like housing construction. I will thank you all for being here. Um, to this episode of the first million is always the hardest. I'm gonna ask each of you while you eat and try not to catch you in moments where you're in the middle of a bite, to uh just tell us a little bit about who you are, your role in the organization, and the company a little bit as well. So we'll start with you, Luis, um, and then we'll go around the table.
SPEAKER_02Oh, thank you for having us here, Paul. My name is Luis Vasquez. I'm the president of Toro Construction. A background on me, um, I was born and raised in Mexico. I migrated when I was 17 years old. I officially have been here 32 years now, of course, coming with dreams and to fulfill the American dream. We currently uh uh Toro Construction is a general contractor in Chicago and it's the entire state of Illinois and across the water in a few states. We also own two manufacturing companies. There it's called Integrity Wall. And I also own a few restaurants and event venues. Um I'll keep you there. I'm 49 years old and actually uh been living in Chicago Ridge for almost 20 years now. So we're in your neighborhood? You're in my neighborhood.
SPEAKER_01Welcome.
SPEAKER_05Thank you, John.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, John Benzinger, um CRO of Aero Pussy. We're a uh SaaS platform, basically, cloud-based service provider for aerospace independent small businesses. Um all of us, you know, who kind of the companies have most of our crews in aerospace, um, you know, and kind of just knowing the redundancies and inefficiencies in in the market. It's a really old, you know, even though it's airplanes and helicopters and seems like cool tech, it's actually really old school and really, you know, um archaic, you know, in how business practices operate. So we were just like, there's gotta be a after living in the industry for a long time, we're like, there's gotta be a better way to do things. Um so we s started a cloud platform to address a lot of the big issues that you know are happening just in the day-to-day work of small businesses in aerospace and defense.
SPEAKER_03That's great. Eugene. I'm Eugene Botchway. I'm the president of uh ability engineering technology inc. Um being in the South, um South Holland for um 60, 70 years now. Old business that I've been a part of for probably the last 15 years. Um originally I'm from Ghana, that's in uh West Africa. Uh ended up coming to college here in Texas. Got a full right to go to a small school in Texas I'd never heard of before, very UA. And I did mechanical engineering, and out of that ended up working for a couple of large power companies and eventually ended up at ability engineering technology. What we do at Ability Engineering Technology is we are experts in the design and manufacture of custom equipment and precision machine parts used in lots of process industries. And process industries are where in a process you are moving something from one position to another. So we move solids, we move liquids, and we move gases. Um a key component of what we do is in the space of cryogenics. So you start talking about really, really low temperatures. It's a niche area, but using a lot of industries from healthcare. When you're building MRI machines, we use it a lot in space. Um today's big rage quantum computing, microelectronics has a really big role in that area as well. Um, the Defense Department uses it a lot for different types of satellites and other businesses. And the DOE is our number one client, and they use a lot of that technology at all the DOE labs are around the country. We do work globally, all over the place. Um and uh our hopes and dreams are to continue to expand and do more in this niche area that seems to be growing a lot faster than most people probably even appreciate. So that's who we are, and it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for the opportunity to uh talk about who we are and who I am.
SPEAKER_05So the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense are critical elements for a lot, and just for listeners to you know what DOE stands for. Yes. But I have to start with you said that you've been here for 60 or 70 years, so you've been using cryogenics on yourself. Because there's no way that you are like you've got to be 90 years old if you've been all after you've good looks.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. If I could get the recipe, I'd button it and I'd retire.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Well, we we all may be in need of cryogenics soon. Um feeling a little bit like uh what was that movie with uh the the uh the guy that uh oh my goodness, Goldfinger. Oh but the the new one that they did. I know who you're talking about. Yeah, I'll get it'll come to me. But well, listen, one of the things we're really interested in for each of you, because each of you are in this industries that are critical to our future. You know, Lewis, the work that you're doing around housing, affordable housing in particular is one of the most important assets that every major municipality needs to figure an answer out to in order to sustain the diversity of employees that are necessary in a marketplace. Obviously, software, um, and in particular, given what's been happening in the last several months, around the issues for software and air traffic control and issues that's been really pertinent. But SaaS models, you know, software as a service, and all of the work that you're doing. There's been a growth industry really for the last 20 years for a lot of folks, and the work that you're doing, um, Eugene, that is around advanced manufacturing, is a key component of what we hope to actually bring back to the United States and to grow. I'm curious just if you guys can share what your experience has been around the economy over the course of the last year in particular. How has it impacted your business? To what degree, for good or for bad, to what degree have tariffs impacted your business, if at all? And really, I think people are interested in understanding and how have you guys been paying for tariffs out of your company's profits? Um, and what has that looked like?
SPEAKER_03I'll say uh the the impact of tariffs I'm gonna make for us. Um we don't know how government work, and typically government work is fixed different price, yeah. So you can't just go back and say, guess what? Price just went up, therefore help me out. It's not gonna happen. Um and so that's caused a problem for some of the projects that we are doing because all of a sudden we are stuck. And um, there's really no way around it. You gotta figure out you can be a little more efficient to get your costs down and hope you at least break even and cover the cost for those projects. I mean, the next project you're able to then build in whatever tariff issues that might exist. But some of our projects run a very, very long time. Years sometimes, because there's a lot of engineering components involved, a lot of back and forth collaboration. So it's not like every six months, six weeks or so up ship. It can take a long time. So that's hurt on some projects. Um, the concept of bringing work back to the states, onshoring, it's great. It's a great concept. But if you look at manufacturing in the US, there are lots of things we don't make. So, yeah, you want to start buying all your stainless steel from Arrow or Road Allies or some mill, but there's some mills in the US that only make certain sizes. So now you have to go to Europe. You have no choice. And so that's where you get stuck with the tariff issue, and then you have to figure out how to deal with it. We want to bring more jobs back. It's a great concept, but we don't have the talent pool to do the work all the time. All the time. It's very difficult to get skilled welders or machinists, or I mean engineering is a whole different ballgame. And so that's a huge challenge, you know. So great to bring in all this work back, but who's gonna do the work? We haven't figured out a solution yet to the problem. And it's gonna take years to develop the kind of infrastructure that we need to be able to do this work domestically. So we're dealing with multiple challenges. It's a great idea. I mean, if I look at the number of inquiries we are getting right now from industrial companies, the number has gone up. Lots of industrial companies in the US are asking for quotes. Um getting it done, getting the job, it's taking a long time. Uh it's been a tough year, but we're trying to manage it as best as we can.
SPEAKER_01You can't just flip a switch and open a factory in a month, right? Like it takes a long time.
SPEAKER_05I'm curious because you're in an industry, Luis, where you're buying raw materials and a lot of them are coming from Canada. You know, you're dealing with wood products and things of that nature. How have uh tariffs impacted your ability to build profitably in the short term?
SPEAKER_02In the construction linguisting, you always think you're protected because the NAFTA agreement, you're protected by the two largest partners of the United States, right? Mexico and Canada, you get steel, you get wood, you get other manufacturing allies within Mexico and Canada. We always thought we were protected by that agreement, right? But of course, we've been facing these challenges, uh, and the biggest impact is how aggressive we are with our clients to negotiate a contract. We need to be protected. So we always have to amend certain aspects, they call it uh force mature. Now we have to add certain clauses to tariffs and then want to strike it through. What we've been doing to offset it is we can commit to you for certain days as long as you give us a deposit or allow us to impose that in an early stage to offset those tariffs. But to be honest with you, for the last months that we've been listening or hearing about these tariffs, we haven't seen any skyracking on prices on lumber or steel. Looks like they've been able to keep it stable. But we're it just creates more stress, more uh impact within our clients, because we need to be protected. Uh, of course, the number one thing we always will rely on China is uh the appliances. That's the one thing we have to prioritize and mechanical units, but um we haven't seen a big impact so far yet.
SPEAKER_05I I've heard that from other companies that there's been some change, and depending on particular products, some products there's been a huge increase, but by and large, it's been a little back and forth. A lot of the um there was an effort to buy a lot of material and inventory right in front of the tariffs to keep prices low in hopes that there was going to be some stability. But the uncertainty is one of the things that's really driving a lot of people um, you know, to have headaches. I'm curious in the software space where you're not as reliant and there isn't a digital tariff, how has uncertainty in the economy impacted your business and people's willingness to hire you guys to do that work?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, it's um you see it in the industry itself, obviously building software, we're not importing things. Um and we're still kind of in that you know, um earlier stage startup mode, you know. Um, but just you know, I mean, we're out out in aerospace and defense, and I don't there's not an airplane or helicopter that's fully made in one country anywhere. So um yeah, I mean it's definitely led to a lot of uncertainty. Um, you know, it's still playing out, right? Because, you know, uh tariffs on and off and on and off, and you know, it hasn't, I don't think it's fully hit yet. Um, but it's I mean it's a real global industry, right? Um you know, the the uh Boeing itself, you know, the airplanes are sold everywhere, right? What what impact does that have? Um a lot of foreign manufacturers of airplanes, like the US is uh the largest market for you know um French manufacturers, you know, and you know, other people. Um, you know, so what the overall impact will be, let alone just the component parts that go back and forth across the border, especially with NAFTA, like you know, people are are are uneasy, I'd say. But it hasn't quite hit yet.
SPEAKER_05What was there any impact in your business as a result of the you know increase in crashes that we saw you know a few months ago? Did that change how people determine the need for your product at all?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean we're we're we're really more on the um the defense industrial-based supplier side, um, as well as a bit of the um um aftermarket MROs like the maintenance repair overhaul, the the garage shops for airplanes. Um, you know, so we we haven't been within the operators themselves. That's that's not quite where we play. Um but you know, definitely, I mean, there's always something happening in the industry where it's like, oh, there's a major, you know, major issue. Um but yeah, tariffs itself, um, you know, obviously as a software company, it doesn't do it directly, but we see it in the industry.
SPEAKER_05What about immigration for you guys? And how has immigration at all levels impacted your business? There's been a huge surge of people leaving, both the folks that often we are hiring at kind of operational levels to do work, but also kind of the folks who are you know the brain trust of companies who have also decided to leave in some cases. Has it been an impact at all on your businesses, or has that been muted as well?
SPEAKER_02Um so we're a union firm, right? And 40% of union workers are minorities, right? Black and brown and other uh groups. So there has been an impact because of course people are afraid, even even if they're legal here, right? Uh based on what's been going on. Um the other thing that's been affecting the end of a la program, the the DNI from uh the federal level, uh impacting contracts, uh places like O'Hare, uh there are other federal subsidized programs that were stopped. Uh so immigration and has an impact in many levels. Uh we reduce our our crews by maybe 20%. Um just uh it has an impact on our backlog or our project uh projections. Uh we've seen a lot of people and I call it what we call in work, yeah. We don't know whether well.
SPEAKER_05You know, one of the things that happened after COVID in a lot of places, but New York in particular, was that um, you know, people when they didn't have a job, not because of immigration per se, but they left the country. But when COVID eased up and they tried to reopen a lot of those restaurants, there wasn't enough staff. Um, arguably there still isn't enough staff, and many of these restaurants are still operating. I know you're a restaurant owner, um, and many of these restaurants are still operating half or three-quarters staffed because they've not been able to recover since COVID. Have you experienced that as a restaurant uh owner?
SPEAKER_02Uh due to COVID, we lost 70% of our workforce. 70%. So, of course, we have to manage it, restrategize, and rely on the immediate family. Our manager left, uh, immediate people left in the head cooks and everything. So we rely within our own family who can who's willing to take over these positions. We were forced to downsize for two years. Of course, now we're picking up. I think the pandemic is over finally to people's mentality. And this year has been a good year. It was finally uh a stable year. Umce-wise, we learned to work with smaller, smaller uh crews in the restaurant. Yeah. I guess we picked up efficiency, so we don't rely so much on having a lot more people that we can.
SPEAKER_05Has has the changes in things like H1DB's uh status impacted yet your businesses or immigration broadly? Because both of you are in kind of more technical businesses. It's gonna be a problem.
SPEAKER_03The the latest 100,000 journal thing is gonna be a problem. Um the biggest issue we have is the talent we need is not readily available in the United States. Um if you look at cryogenics engineering, I also did some research on this earlier today. There are maybe eight to ten universities in the US that do anything in terms of trying to teach that major. Most people who get into cryogenics have a mechanical engineering degree, but you need a little bit more than mechanical engineering to really understand the concept. So a whole country like this, as big as we are, only about eight to ten universities are doing anything really. I mean, there are a bunch of schools, but a couple here might teach a little class or two but not really focus on it. So, where am I going to find people to harm who can come right in and do the work? They don't exist. And now there's some countries outside the US where they have India being one of them, where they actually have majors in some of these things. Whereby you can find people who can come in here and can hit the ground running. But here in the States, you're you're stuck with poaching somebody from a Department of Energy Lab or somebody who's worked at another company that's a competitor to try and build your workforce. Or you're essentially left to the point where you hire somebody who maybe can come in, and then you're spending three, four, five years trying to invest in them to get them up to speed. So the H1B issue is problematic. We'll probably feel it more as we try to expand and as we get into the quantum computing, AI, and all this, and we need more technical resources to build the infrastructure for those types of facilities, where are we going to find the people? I would say right now it's too early, we haven't figured it all out yet. But next year, I think it's going to be a bigger problem.
SPEAKER_02And I want to play both role here as do the main mediator, but uh in the construction area, there is a lot of funding from the state, even for the whole for workforce development, right? That's one of your missions. Yes. Is there anything existing for technology or anything that you do where the road can help you promote workforce development education for the roles that you guys do in your business? Like it would be an in a strong investment upon the borrowing. So maybe it's gonna take you years to do that, but there is a serious investment on the construction side, right? Yeah, for the investment is another side.
SPEAKER_03And uh I was talking to the folks at Illinois, EDC, used to be Intersect Illinois now. Intersect Illinois, yep. Yeah, they've changed names to Economic Development Corporation, I guess. Where they are programs, and I'm trying to work with them to actually develop a workforce development program where we can actually look at working with retired professors, other universities to kind of create a curriculum that we at elite engineering would say, you know what, we'll actually start a training program, not just for us, but to help others. I mean, we don't really want to educate our competition, but if it's a business that we could develop to help get some of these people up with speed so that as the economy develops and technology, you have people who can actually go do this. Because small businesses, we can't always spend our money trying to train people because we want to make a profit in a you know, a welder to do cryogenic welding probably takes a year.
SPEAKER_05And once you've made that investment, you really got to keep that person for a long enough time to make it worth its while. No, this whole issue of workforce is major. I'm curious, you know, for you, you've got kind of a double-edged possible sword and possible good thing because software development has really changed. We were being told everybody should go be a coder, and now I can do coding myself.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, we you know, we we we do leverage modern tools, you know, kind of in in all aspects. But going back to uh thing on both like workforce development and and the the visa thing, you know, we so we we work closely with Elmhurst University with their STEM program, and we have you know uh some brilliant interns you know with us through there. Um and you know, one one guy, I mean he's he's he's uh from Ukraine, you know, uh able to get into the program at Elmhurst, and you know, he's you know a rock star with us um as an intern. You know, and we're you know our hope is to bring him on you know at after he finishes school. But you know, there's you there's and I I don't know all the details, and you know, I think the the student music he's under you know allows for a few years, but you know, I mean at the end of the day it feels like it may be in flux, right? Like you don't know what what's going to be in flux. And you know, for the H1BVs that are you know, all of a sudden there's a hundred thousand dollar price tag on it to you know hire anyone with that, it makes it almost unemployable, right? So, you know, what you know, I mean, we're doing what what we can, we're working with interns, you know, very closely. We're finding some brilliant students, um, you know, and a lot of those are are foreign-born people, you know, and put some mechanics to bring them on.
SPEAKER_05Our experience is the same. We um at the Southland Development Authority, when we were formed, we immediately uh developed a partnership with University of Chicago's Applied Data Fellows Program. Um, and that was a program that allowed us to take graduate students principally, mostly from the University of Chicago system, but sometimes from other places, uh work with them for about a year's time, and then they often would either leave or we would hire them. We've been successful in bringing a number of those people on board full-time to work with us, including SAR and others. Um, and we've actually helped to sponsor some people in order to be able to work legally here in the country, largely because some of the skill sets we were looking for that are specific to data science, you know, are very specific, maybe not quite as specific as cryogenics, but still in rare capacity broadly in the community. Um, and that's been an important component to our growth. We've actually used data as a really important tool to demonstrate the impact that we're having, uh, but needing science behind it and people who are really focused on STEM. This isn't an ad, it's just our experience. At the Southland Development Authority, we've spent the past five years growing our team. And time after time we've turned to LinkedIn, not because we had to, but because it worked. It's where we found people who share our mission, our energy, and our commitment to the community. For a small but growing organization like ours, it saved us both time and money and connected us with talent that we might never have found otherwise. If you're looking for the right people to help grow your business, I can tell you from experience that LinkedIn works.
SPEAKER_00Your listening to the first million is always the hardest. We are now returning to the show.
SPEAKER_05You know, one of the things that's really interesting that I'm interested in getting your your feedback on, too, is artificial intelligence is kind of a wave that's hitting us. You know, there is a thought that we're gonna be at AGI or artificial general intelligence within the next two years, which essentially means that machines can then learn on their own. Um, and at that point, that changes the dynamics of how we work with artificial intelligence. I've already started to make some different choices in my hiring on the basis of artificial intelligence. There's a lot of work that I would usually rely on for one person to do that now I can actually leverage AI to do, and that's even separate from using robots, tie bots, you know, to do that work. Um how is artificial intelligence potentially helping your businesses or threatening your businesses? And I I started the question with you on software coding because I just finished, I just finished doing this work around creating a tool that would create criteria for investing metrics for real estate and putting together kind of my JSOC that I would use to be able to you know enter into you know another uh uh app that would help me create kind of this module. You know, I was not thinking about any of this stuff honestly six months ago, and now I have to think about and I use AI in one form or another every single day.
SPEAKER_01Totally, totally. Yeah, I well I mean from from our standpoint, you know, our thought is like lean in, right? I mean, AI is, you know, I mean 30 years ago the internet was a big scary thing, you know, and everyone was like, oh, it's gonna kill all these other things and all that stuff, and the economy changed for sure with it, right? Um where where the chips fall with AI, you know, we don't know exactly, but we know that you know the economy and how we do business is is going to change. So, you know, we I mean being a you know a software platform, we've we've we built a AI indoor platform. Um we're a different mold, you know, we're we um with all the um cybersecurity requirements for companies selling into the the DOD and you know regulations there, you know, we we had to build a AI feature that's kind of within our compliance model. Um, you know, but that's what we lean into. So if you're you know, if you if you're forecasting, you know, and you're running your purchase orders through us and you're managing your inventory and you're you know saying, all right, I have my quotes that I have out there today, what's my run weight, what win rate, you know, what what should I expect to have to increase in inventory, all those types of things, you know. I mean that's something you can do on our platform that I know takes away some of the planning jobs that other businesses, right? What do you think is a risk to your business today? A risk, uh I mean, I I I don't think I don't think our company itself would be at risk from AI. You know, what what what we provide is is um this compliant cloud system that you can go and and and do your operations in as an aerospace firm and um you know and and meet all the requirements within like traceability requirements, you know, everything's blockchain back, so you can prove authenticity, all that type of stuff. So um, you know, I don't think we're we're we're we're at risk. I think that we we have an opportunity. Um, but definitely you know what we've built in our company, um I think we've been able to build with a smaller crew, especially over the last couple years, because we we can leverage AI. It even goes down to like marketing, right? You know, in my world, I mean we're we're not hiring graphic designers to create graphics for using AI, right? Yeah, um, you know, messaging, all those types of things, right? You know, that's that's I mean, that's a big change, right? That's a big change.
SPEAKER_05You know, one of the things that people always say is, well, you know, trades are going to be safe because AI can't hammer a nail or revolt and all that kind of stuff. Honestly, I I don't think so. I actually think that the pace of change of humanoid robots that are using AI is going to actually accelerate faster than people think. Um, I actually think there will be AI plumbers in the next five to ten years. But I'm curious, given the experience that you're having in your space, does AI pose in your mind a threat? Or does AI pose an opportunity for you?
SPEAKER_02If I go back in time when automatic Nelgas were created, they were taking people's jobs and they were, right? Right. But as we advance to today's day, AI is not taking anybody's job, it's just making us look better. In many ways, I love AI. I initially adopted AI for contracts, and which is compliant to federal state law. And it's really not that expensive, it's about$10,000 a year. And it's made by lawyers. And you want to draft a contract in compliance to the state of Illinois. You just describe what you're trying to do, who's going to be your client, or who's going to be your contractor. It develops a not bulletproof, nothing is bulletproof, but at least for all the terms and conditions of the contract. Once it's executed, you wanted to produce a purchase order. I'd like to produce a purchase order for a XYZ contractor. I'm going to put this guy on notice, or I'm going to send any type of notice is a draft for you. You review it. And he just honestly saved me$100,000 from the previous law firm I was hiring just for dossiers. Before I sent any notices, I had to consult with a lawyer. Because my wife, as a former paralegal back in the days, she said that technology at some point was already available to the law firm she was working for. It was a book. And they would search for words and we come up with a document, but now it's available to us. On the marketing side, it should make us look at our facilities a lot better. But we always leave the human touch behind it. Because one thing when AI expert told me, I interviewed him to come and work with us, he was the one thing about AI, it would never it always have an answer. You need to tell him the parameters. Because he will never say, you know, I don't know. Even if it's the wrong answer, it would give you something. So you need to control it. But always add a human touch to that. And the field, I mean, which we can create robots, but it is not a mission we're doing. It's gonna be almost impossible. There is some technology, lasers and other technology that is out there to save us time if we want it as well you know it's interesting.
SPEAKER_05Um philosophically, I there's another episode that we're gonna talk about AI. Um, so I won't get into it with you all as much now. You'll have to listen into the first million is always the hardest. That's my one little pitch. But um there is a belief that um there are gonna be kind of short, intermediate, and long-term changes. I philosophically believe long-term it will be to everyone's benefit, but there will be major adjustments, and the disruption that takes place in that adjustment could be catastrophic. Yeah, right? Um, for those communities that can actually make that leap and get to a place where there is abundance of knowledge and therefore there's abundance of access for a lot of different things, it'll be good. But there is a process by which, you know, particularly in Western societies where status is so driven by a scarcity mentality, getting to a place where there is a shared economy could be very difficult, if not impossible. Um, and so I'm I I don't know where we're gonna be. Um I'm planning for the worst and hoping for the best. Um, but I do know that every um business needs to be thinking about it, and most small businesses are in a place right now where they're not actually um quite doing enough work that's necessary to get themselves ready for that future.
SPEAKER_03So VI future? Yeah. I mean it's it's complicated for us because we get some of the same benefits you get, Luis. Um we use it for marketing. You know, if I want to look at all the companies or industries in the United States that have hypersonic wind tunnel products, I can just type that in and to tell me where to go. Do you want me to write a letter for you for how you should market? I mean, yeah, it will do all those things for me. Yeah, yeah. And I'm sure if I told it to send those guys letters, it probably would do that too. So you got that piece where it's very helpful. I don't need to go hire a bunch of guys thinking all day long and doing research to find that. Some of our engineers use it on occasion to answer some basic technical questions. Uh, we got a call last week from a client. That's a pressure vessel that they bought from China. Now they realize they don't have any documentation and they want to put it into operation. And they send us a note, you know, what do we need to do? You could take that plug it, and it's if you look at the code book, you can do this or you can do that. That's just a high-level piece of information. If you've been working for four, five, six, ten years, I don't have a problem with you looking at that and answering. A new engineer has no clue what is reading. Yeah, because to your comment, it's always gonna give you an answer.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and that that that's that I think is the mistake of AI, right? It it has gotten a lot better. I mean, in the past six months, I've noticed less hallucinations. Five is better than four, right? Yeah, but like let you know, it's making less things up, right? Um, but you know, really let for for newer people, for for kids out of college, right? Though those those that's uh what we're using to replace it right now, right? Where your kind of middle level manager, you know, who's managing a team of people, now they're starting to manage a team of AI agents, right? Um, you know, and I I I think that's where the labor you know transitions will are are are most felt in the short term.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But you know, the the one thing with AI, you know, not that I'm an AI expert, but you know, but with my belief. They I mean well, A AI doesn't AI scans the whole internet and finds the best practices and you know puts together things that that it finds out there that make sense. But it doesn't really create any brand new things, right? So the real creative industries, the real creative types, the real creative um um, you know, jobs are the ones that I think are are are the safest.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. You know, it's really interesting. I started in an industry um as an analyst doing mergers and acquisitions, you know, in New York. And at that time, you know, um, so Lotus 123 came out in like the 80s, right? And um, you know, that was the first time that you could, you didn't have to do, you know, analysis by paper. Um, Excel came out kind of around the time that I started to get on on Wall Street, and that was a big revelation. Yeah, but you were still inputting all of the numbers and having to do the calculation. You were still actually having to count yourself. You had to understand not only how the model worked, but you actually had to understand what was behind the model, what inputs and outputs were supposed to happen. You know, by the time I left Wall Street, they now had macros, right? So I could put in 20 numbers and it would output the same thing that I used to have to spin and write out by hand. Now, you know, they don't even have to do that. So the problem is right, how do you get a senior banker if they were never a junior banker?
SPEAKER_03Correct.
SPEAKER_05You don't need a junior banker anymore.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that reminds me of a story one of uh an engineer who's now retired, told us. It's from Europe someplace, I'll leave it at that. And he started off in civil engineering and he used to build bridges. And he said, back in those days, after he built the bridge, you had to stand under the bridge to prove because they drove trucks across the bridge. If you thought it was such a good design and the calculations were right, and I'm thinking using all the computers and all the AI stuff, I mean, I don't think I'd want to trust nothing to come up with a design and I'd go stand and I need that bridge and say, ah, drive over and let's see whether it's gonna work. I'm not that confident that the data coming out is always that accurate. And the thing is, when am I going to feel confident that what I'm getting is accurate? Because who's checking this stuff? Yeah. Because there's no police I know monitoring the outputs that you get.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and that's where where uh when when when I can tell people are using AI, I can tell they're not checking it. You know, I mean you gotta read through, even if you know, if it's you know, I don't know, asking ChatGPT to help me with this, you know, better word a simple email, right? It still takes a couple iterations, right? You gotta read through it, work it, not just put something in there and grab it. Um but it's it's it's coming, and and I mean we leverage it in everything, you know, even I mean, restaurants. My partner owns a restaurant here in Chicago as well. And you know, we just got stickers made, you know, for us, you know, Sicilian street food, so Sicilian style stickers, and where we used to go to a company and hire their graph designers, put it in Chat GPT in a couple iterations, and it wasn't perfect, and he had to have the graph designer make a change, but man, what a cost savings! Yeah, right?
SPEAKER_05Well, I'm curious, kind of changing topics a little bit, because part of the idea of the podcast is we want to find this intersection between what's driving your businesses and what's driving you. You know, um, everyone kind of outwardly is so eager to find a way to get to financial freedom. And philosophically, we think that to get to financial freedom, you've got to be on a path of personal fulfillment. But a lot of that is driven by your childhood dreams. Just to give you an example, you know, when I was uh 11 years old, I met this man, I was a friend of my mother's, who's from Barbados, and he told me a story that when he graduated from high school at 16, 17 and finished his A levels, that he uh became a stowaway on an oil tanker. And he got out to see before they they they figured out who he was, and it was they were too far out, so they couldn't bring him back. So he stayed on the oil tanker for a year and he traveled the world, right? He's 17 years old, and he traveled the entire globe all the way around until they came back to Barbados and dropped him off. And when I was a kid, I was like, that's what I want to do. That's it. You know, I realized as I got older, what was really driving me was this idea behind wonder and exploring. You know, I wanted to see the world. It wasn't that I needed to be a stowaway on an oil tanker, right? Um but you know, I had to figure out how do I take that dream and turn it into something that's actionable. And so I created this kind of concept that I've been using called Dream Ladder. So, you know, if if my underlying desire is for me to actually explore the world and have wonder, well, a simple way to do it is to eat a different food at a different you know location for a different type of culture on a regular basis, right? So I can experience what it is to you know eat Polish food or eat Chinese food or eat you know food from Afghanistan, wherever. I can take the next step, which is a little bit more complicated, and study the music, the art, and the culture. I can take a more complicated step and actually learn a language. Um, I speak Spanish like Dora the Explorer, unfortunately. Um my French is rapidly deteriorating. Um, but these are ways of really understanding a culture, or I could travel to those cities, right? And part of what I'm interested in hearing from each of you is a little bit about your dreams when you were a child and how those things might have impacted the business that you're in. Um and also um if you had to reframe that desire, you may have wanted to be, you know, a soccer star, right? Or you wanted to play the guitar. How have you or have you reframed any of those dreams into something that's actionable today that helps you have a sense of personal fulfillment in addition to what you do at work?
SPEAKER_03And I'll just start with you. I think my dreams changed over time. Um when I was a kid, my parents were expatriates. So we lived in Zambia, which is in the southern part of Africa. My dad was a school teacher, my mom's a nurse. So we traveled back to Ghana, and I always wanted to be an airline pilot. I'll sit by the wings and I'll get the flaps come up, but that's what I wanted to do. So I ended up getting admission to go to college in Texas. Oh big, oh things just didn't work well in Ghana at the time. I was waiting for my uh O-levels. That's what we took about them. Resolved to go back to Ghana. And a friend of my parents was a medical doctor. He happened to be visiting to just hang out with his wife and kids whilst I was in Zambia at that time. And he said, Oh, whilst you're waiting for your O-level results, why don't you apply to schools in the US? Because you're not a medical school in the US. So I had nothing else going on. I applied. I got accepted, I get a full room and board, and that's how the story came out. So I get to the US, pray you didn't have uh aeronautical engineering, so I did mechanical engineering. Then I go for a couple of interviews, I don't have anything yet getting ready to graduate. And I see this lady who was sitting in an interviewing, and I just walked in and said, hi. And she said, Hey, hi. I said, she said, I was waiting to talk to an electrical engineer, and the guy didn't show up. So I have some free time. I didn't have a job. Still hustling trying to figure out what I'm gonna do. So she and I talk for about an hour, and I'm going on about how I came to the US, my dreams, and I mean this is just random person. She says, I'll pass on your resume to the mechanical guys at General Electric. I get a letter like two, three weeks. I thought, ah, it's just next thing I know, I fly to Atlanta, go for the interview, and I get hurt. So, so long story, you know. So I realized, I've always believed that, you know, I tell my kids all the time, no money's an island. We all need a break. Somebody's gonna help you if you are available, blah, blah, blah. And it's also also kind of dawned on me that you also have to be willing to help others. Yeah. Somebody had to, if that woman hadn't spoken with me, what would have happened to my career? I don't know. Have you kept in touch with her at all? No. It's been years, been 30 plus years now, I think. You know what? That would be interesting. I should look into that. But you know, people help you for all kinds of reasons. There was something about me that day that made them want to talk to me, and vice versa. So that really has formed how I think. And then I also look back when I travel and sometimes meet some of my classmates from years ago who were not as fortunate as I was. And I think about if that guy had been born five miles on this this side of the railroad trucks versus this other, this zip code, if somebody had walked up to their parents and said, why doesn't your kid apply to the US? Life's, you know, we get breaks all the time.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And that changed my whole life. So I look at that, and as I've matured, my worldviews changed consistently. So when I look at my business, some of the proudest things I get out of owning a business right now is I look in the parking lot and I see the guy hired, who's now married, now has kids, has a job, you know. And you gave him that? Yeah. One of my proudest hires was a kid who came to us from right there in the south side when he was in high school and said, I'd like to know what engineers do. And we looked at him and uh said, Ah, come on in. We're making it money. But we said, come hang out, walk around, see what we're doing. We ended up helping this kid go through college, paid a little bit of his tuition. He had a job with us every summer. He's now a senior cryogenics guy, it's been 12, 15 years. It's one of my proudest.
SPEAKER_05That's amazing. And that's one of the things I tell people about being an entrepreneur. Yeah. It isn't just that you make money, it's that you get to hire people.
SPEAKER_04Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_05And when you pay them, you're changing their life, right? They're feeding their family. But I just want to say one thing. How fascinating is it that your dream as a child was to be a pilot. Yeah. And now you're building rockets.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Right? Never even considered. How many people actually are in a space where they've been able to take their childhood dream and transition it into something that you do every day? That's one of the principles I find around happiness. It isn't necessarily that I've made all this money and done all these things. It's that this thing that is that you can't even describe why you liked being at the wing and why you like being a pilot. It was just like a subconscious aspect of you as a child, but you were gravitated towards it. And naturally, you've moved yourself into a place where you're building components to go to rockets to do exactly that.
SPEAKER_03And I'll tell you, uh, making money is nice. But making money and being able to influence somebody else's life in a positive way.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I mean, you can stop. At the end of the day, you want to be remembered for something. And I mean, when you hire that guy, even if he's making minimum wage, but all of a sudden you just see their lives improving, you just feel like you've done something. And uh I feel I tell my children this all the time our lives are not we're not here to just live life and just kind of nothing. We're here to do something with our lives, and hopefully we do something with our lives that helps somebody else. You never really know who you are. When I hire a guy with an H1B, and I remember back in those days, when I was a foreign guy, I wish somebody could have said, Oh, you know, you hire you, we'll give you a shot, two, three. It's it's it's it's important.
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SPEAKER_00Your listening to the first million is always the hardest. We are now returning to the show.
SPEAKER_05You are in an industry where you've got a lot of people who uh, particularly in trade, you know, um, that but for the work that you do would be impossible for them to take care of their families. What you were doing every day is supporting not only your family, but many, many families. I'm curious about your background and your story. What were your dreams when you were a child? You know, how connected is what you do to what some of your dreams were? Um, and uh, if you could just kind of give us a little bit of your sense of your background.
SPEAKER_02Sure. Uh we were a middle class in Mexico. We I guess we were living a good life, never moved our foot at the table. My dad was a farmer, but also was a politician in our town. He loved politics. His first dream was to be a doctor, he couldn't do it because he had to help my grandfather at the farm, but he was a really good politician, and people will follow him. And as a kid, I would see my dad in a podium giving speeches, and I was falling asleep on the chairs like late night and everything. And we had to hang out with other kids. I like to see my old man being respected so much. And people were pushing him to tell them you can go higher, you can go to the state level. He wouldn't take it. He said just to protect us because they're always gonna say there's corruption and this thing. So he wanted to keep us all protected. But as a kid, as a teenager, as I start going, the ultimate goal, when you're 13, 14, you migrate to the United States for one purpose. Make$10,000, bring it back, and spend it here with a pickup truck, and they're the most beautiful girl in town. Yes. I was attracted, right? Of course, the first time I came and I went back, I was following that kind of rule, right? I'm the cool guy now, I'm doing town after three years and spending money like I didn't have. But this one man, um, I was just talking to him, was a very successful guy. He was cashing dollars. Everybody will go and cash pressures for dollars and was making tons of money. He goes, Louisa, are you going back? I'm going back. This time from no mess up. You need to start saving you money. Don't do what this other stupid kids. You come from a good father, you have good grounds, you gotta save your money. If you come back, you better come back married, because don't start fooling around these kids like these kids are. Make sure you find a good wife, because you need a good wife beside you to support you. They said, I know you're gonna own a business, I don't know what, but I don't know what your dreams are. And that always stood in my mind because my grandfather and my dad, they never worked for anybody, they had their own farm, their own business, they never rely on catching a paycheck. That was how far it was. When I migrated a second time coming back, I did find it beautiful and grateful. I mean, uh, I was grateful to find my wife, Tokoro. I was in my 20s. And she always knew, she always said the same thing. You're gonna run your business. I didn't know I was gonna be in construction. Um, the biggest accomplishment is to help people around you to grow financially with you, media family. And everyone has been doing that. My sisters were stay-home moms, and I told them, You're too you're too smart to be home and do nothing. You need to be the manager of XYZ restaurant, and you're gonna be managing this oil venue. You start them as a waitress or buzzer or hostess, and now they're the actual managers two years later. They're smart in doing math, they're smart in managing people. Same thing with my brother, he's my partner. He was a good guy, he's a good leader, he's a director of operations. So nothing was created just by myself, it was created collectively because the families always have your back, right? Now, if I wasn't doing what I'm doing, I think I'd be a very politician, an elector official. You still can I would love to be a senator. I feel politics now, it's all about being at the remote cuttings, groundbreakings. They need to learn to legislate. And they're more for the picture than anything else. There is a lot of things that they can do. They just don't know how to. I think there should be a cohort for them. Before you become an elector official, this is what you need to do. Run a business. Run a business.
SPEAKER_03It helps a hot dog stand. That's a little big. Run a profitable hot dog stand before you can be a politician.
SPEAKER_02And that should sound simple enough, right? It's hard. But you're right, but you're saying uh our controller, she's our top rank in accounting. She was a single mother walking in our office. The office was the size of I don't know, one quarter of this room. We have four desks. She walked in as a single mother. The kid in a less than one year old looking for a job, and she had only two years on accounting science. I need help to print receifts, and we hire her moving forward. She spent what that's eight years, she's our controller, she bought a house, a car, she's getting married again. Um, it's just one story of every 50 people that we're going to have.
SPEAKER_03That's amazing. It's amazing. One thing to add, as you were saying the story about the lady is one of the things that I also like about being a business owner is I'm not uh stuck with the rules of the larger companies as to what type of person I hire. You get to take a risk on what you have. We have some folks who work for us right now that you would never hire them in an engineering firm. They might not have the right credentials, they might not do, but they've been with us long enough where we know what true value they bring. And so you're able to improve people, I mean you pay them well because you know what they do, not because of the degree they have. And so being an owner of a business gives you an opportunity to actually do certain things that you wouldn't have that opportunity to do if you work in a totally different environment. And that's something I really value.
SPEAKER_05I think that's a so I I will just say, you know, I tell our team all the time as a not-for-profit organization, our job is to take risks on people and projects that the private sector would not do. Yeah, because if we're not taking that risk and the market is gonna do it, what what's the benefit of us being a not-for-profit organization, right? Um, and you know, if you want to use an investment term, there's a lot of alpha. There's a lot of opportunity if you're taking a risk on somebody that others won't, right? So there are moments when you hit it and you find that right person, you know, like you won the lottery. Um, and uh, but your point is when you are that owner, you get to determine that risk. And your vision of what someone looks like who's willing to take that, that you're willing to take that risk on um is important. Um, and also to train, you know, to invest, like you were describing with your sisters, how you basically said, All right, I'm gonna set you up with a situation here, I'm gonna pay you a salary, but you're gonna kind of start to buy and you're gonna work your way up, but I'm gonna work with you to get you to a place, and now they're bosses, you know, they earn their way, but you took a risk on them, you invested in them by training them to get them to that place. It ends up being to your benefit too, right? You get a benefit of having trusted people that are in positions of knowledge and experience, but other people may have never taken that risk on them if they walked in and said, you know, hey, I've never I've never done anything in this space before, but I'd like a job. So um, John, I'm interested in hearing your story and background too, and the hopes and dreams that you had when you were young and how they translate, if at all, to today.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, um, yeah, I don't know. I I I agree that you know I think dreams change, you know, as you grow, right? Um, I know like at you know, as a kid and you know, in high school, and I never wanted to the idea of this is what I'm gonna do for 40 years and I'm gonna do the same thing every day for 40 years, like drove me nuts. Like I could never do that, right? Um, you know, I needed to go after what opportunities I could, you know, and um and and have the ability to not be locked, you know, into something. You know, so um, you know, went to college, got business degrees, you know, worked in sales and marketing um in on various aspects, got in leadership roles pretty quickly, and developed a lot there, which was good. Um got into a aerospace firm. Um worked for an art professor in a small business, always always in a small business. Um you know, he kind of built this business accidentally and you know wanted some sales and marketing. So it was an internship that turned into a job. The recession hit, you know, and so that kind of went away. And then I landed landed in an aerospace company and had a great mentor of a boss and developed a lot and did a lot of things. Um learned the industry well. Um actually left there right as COVID started and went to a consulting company for a bit as the aerospace guy, because you know, worked with a bunch of different companies. But you know, it was really just the idea of seeing the seeing um building an expertise, you know, both in an industry and in a discipline or skill set, you know, and then getting back together with people that I've worked with uh previously, saying, you know, we know the industry, yeah, we know what you know um what we don't like about the industry, and we have an opportunity to change it, right? And and and it's it's the opportunity, right? That says, all right, here, you know, uh as to you know, as opposed to be punching a clock, you know, 40 hours a week for 40 years, you know, chasing the next opportunity, seeing the next thing, right? And really our you know, I mean, the reason we got into aeroplicity and then and doing what we're doing is because we're like, you know, pulling our hair out, at least when I used to have hair, pulling it out with the old school way of doing things in aerospace defense, right? Like, you know, um, everything is so paper-driven in an industry that's supposed to be cutting edge, and you know, we're like, it doesn't have to be this way. Why can't we be scanning QR codes instead of literally printing packets of paper this much? You know, some some people like multiple pallets of paper sometimes go over the shipment of things just for all the documentation. There's a better way to do this. Um why are we managing inventory where we're literally counting items and writing things on cards? Why can't we use you know QR codes? Um, there's all these regulations which we know well. You have to prove authenticity. We built those blockchains, there's technology for it, right? Um, and uh so we've I mean there's an opportunity, right? Which is why we came into the market.
SPEAKER_05Um that's kind of a and how is your dream perhaps changed now? So when you you when you were younger, you were scared by the concept of being focused on one thing. Now you've become an aerospace guy.
SPEAKER_01I where where where it's been consistent is honestly it's it's it's a concept of freedom, right? You know, to be tied to you know this you know 40-year career, right? I mean, there's no freedom in that. You know, making your first million, you know, even the financial concept is about freedom, right? Like, you know, at least theoretically. Theoretically. Theoretically, but to be able to decide, you know, you know, I I can I can go where I want to go and do what I want to do and take risks that I want to take, right? Um, you know, which was part, you know, I mean, hopping on to you know, aeroplicity, a you know, a startup where we can pay ourselves for a while, you know, I you know, I had to be able to have the opportunity to do that, you know, and have enough behind me to be able to do that. So, you know, I think it does kind of, you know, you know, though the individual paths evolve and and what good looks like and what success looks like changes, uh, the goalposts keep changing, you know, for various reasons, right? But at the core of it, just you know, the concept of being able to choose my own destiny, right? And not be stuck and be holding to something else or someone else. That's probably where it stems from.
SPEAKER_05Well, one of the things that you know um I'm really you know interested in is how do you create these kind of ladders of difficulty as I describe them. So, Luis, when you describe the dream implicitly that you said of being a uh a politician, right? Um, there are ways to achieve that goal that aren't necessarily being a politician. You gave a good example of one, which is you know, is why isn't there like this cohort that you create that helps people learn what it is to do legislation before they actually become legislators, right? There's an opportunity to actually do that because that's a real skill. And a lot of people who've never been, you know, working with government don't understand like legislation is a skill. Um, and that's why not just everyone can do it, because it takes time to learn. Your dad obviously had a lot of skill sets in that regard. There are ways to create small things that don't necessarily require you to put what you're doing, um, but could foster you feeling that dream. And a lot of what I try to use this platform of the podcast to is to say, hey, find those kind of ways that you can gradually move yourself in the direction of where you've always wanted to go as a supplement to what you're already doing, because that's where you find this path of personal fulfillment. Real happiness, right? That gets expressed in everything that you do, and turns out that when you are moving in that path, money and other things kind of follow along with it in many instances.
SPEAKER_02To be honest, but you I enjoy so much what I do. To me, it's not a job. Doesn't matter whether it's Saturday, Sunday. They asked me, what would you do when you're retired? Start doing the same thing that I don't do. I did find my passion by building, uh had the exposure to do open other businesses, like the manufacturing company, integrity wall, to work with your agency as well. Uh I guess being a politician is more like uh, yeah. That thing just came a few years later. That didn't know until my wife started saying, you really want to be a politician. Like, yeah, you know what? Thank you. Yeah, you're right. Maybe you're right.
SPEAKER_05But you know, it's it's interesting. Um well, it's funny. 20% of people I ask the question about what they want as a dream actually don't remember having any dreams as a child. Um, and we did, obviously, all of us did, but they can't remember. And like so much of how we think of ourselves is in this really subconscious state of things that for many people it's hard to draw back to. Um, many of those things are filled with all types of trauma. Um, but most of the time those traumas actually turn into superpowers, too. You know, the thing that actually was difficult for you actually gives you some skill set that allows you to do some of the things that you're doing now. So I'm always really interested in keying in on that part. I also am a person that doesn't believe in this idea that we never have regrets and that all you got to do is follow your passion. Some of us have been lucky to find our passion, right? But um, sometimes a job is just a job. The purpose of that job is just to feed your family, and there's no shame in that whatsoever, right? And actually, your passion might be, you know, coaching your daughter's soccer team. And that's okay that the job takes care of the family and allows you to follow that passion. So finding that mix is great. When you're fortunate enough to find the thing that you can get paid to do, right, that you enjoy doing, the world needs it, right? Um, and you're passionate about, kind of, I think in Japanese they call it ikegai. Um, that's like a blessing of when you actually get there. And most of us, you know, most of us don't. We we make some compromise in one of those areas.
SPEAKER_03But you know, there's nothing wrong, you're right, there's nothing wrong with having a job that helps you provide for your family. And sometimes, I mean, it's not any spiritual thing here, but that that makes me think like that. It's just, I guess, life experiences and some of the exposure. But sometimes the impact you have is maybe two or three levels removed from you. Absolutely. You might be feeding your family. Your wife or your husband or your kid might say something to somebody else, or because you're able to provide for your family, you impact somebody else indirectly. And then, you know, that passion you have then comes out through that person. And that's really not how you you you started out. So, number one, you gotta feed your family, you gotta eat, you gotta take care of yourself. But I think we also always have to keep our eyes open for how something we do can inadvertently help somebody else that we maybe wouldn't have been thinking along those lines.
SPEAKER_05I mean, like the woman who stopped you and was willing to talk to you. Yeah, I mean, why did she talk to me that I don't know for an hour?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it made it gave me an opportunity that I would probably not have gotten any other way because the mechanical guys were not there that day to interview anybody.
SPEAKER_02It was interesting. I was called to do uh interview with a school student in the uh arts and culture school right here, Down Street. Uh Senator Presto's daughter. Uh Senator Presto is like a brother, but we will know each other for 20 years. Her daughter asked to interview Presson, so he offered me, so I thought it was going to be one or more. They interview a whole challenge was interviewing. It was I was sweating. Jesus Christ. Uh remember when uh lady you encountered and said, What did that kid? I will always remember. They were asking me questions, answering and things like that. I kept asking. I just couldn't come up with anything else. I said, uh link just doing the reason why you're on business. I don't think you are because I don't think you're asking myself. Um this is exactly how I started asking yourself a question. So you're only 17 years old, but it's exactly how you start. It doesn't matter what industry you want to go in. You start with a perfect scenario with just numbers, understanding numbers, they're masters in economy, and they're only 17 years old. I don't know that was the right message I wanted to share with them, but I didn't want to walk out of that. We didn't learn anything from the yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's hard to speak about yourself. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_05It's very difficult to speak about yourself, and often, you know, particularly for younger people, they only resonate with authenticity. If you don't feel authentic, they just shut down and can't hear you at all. So being authentic is important. And one of the ways that we try to be authentic is to share with them our struggles, you know, the things that didn't work. I'm curious, John, to start with you, you know, what are some of the tough lessons that you've had to learn with Aeroplicity as a startup? You know, and and I typically ask a series of questions, and we probably won't go through them all, but like, you know, did you start Aeroplicity with the idea that this was going to be something that you build and sell? Did you start aeroplicity with the idea that this is going to become an empire that you guys can grow and kind of siphon off money but keep control and power? You know, what are some of the difficult decisions that had to be made about partnerships, raising money from outside capital versus bootstrapping? Yeah. Take us through a little bit of that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um, yeah, I don't I I wouldn't say that, you know, the idea is to build it and sell it. You know, um you know, I don't think it's like grandkids are gonna be running it or anything like that, right? Um, but you know, really, I mean, we we we came to the company, um, a group of us, you know, just like saying we with specific problems we we wanted to solve, right? And building the company to solve those problems. Um we were, I mean, you know, aerospace tech company, blockchain, I mean, we built our own blockchain language, all this stuff, right? So there was when we were first starting in 2023, there was like there was a lot of conversation with VC firms, and you know, we were like, all right, if we can do this, and then we can get this much VC money and all that. Did you guys raise VC money? No. And and I've said it alone. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04No, hell no.
SPEAKER_01I mean, a couple you know, points to that. A uh, I don't know how much it, but 2023 was a terrible year for VC. They were not.
SPEAKER_052025 is a terrible year for VC.
SPEAKER_01So we were like, ah crap. But what we also look uh we were all here's so many stuff, horror stories about BC, right? You know, and and really the the the lesson is like be careful who you partner with. Anything in life, right? When getting married, be careful who your partner is, right? You know, think that through in business, you know, with investors, right? So what what we actually did um was we we we raised on kind of a friends and family round, but really with the the concept of um, you know, we know a lot of people in the industry. Um, you know, we've been doing a lot of voice of customer VOC, you know. I mean, that's a lot of what my background is, you know, what I brought to the table, right? Which helped us steer our direction to what we're developing and how we're building out our platform, and people were really interested in us. So we said, well, why don't like let's raise, let's do kind of a friends and family round, but let's get, I mean, not we didn't want to take a check from anyone who was just offering a check. Right? It's just money, right? What what can they bring to the table? So we raised a lot from inside the industry, you know. Our lead investor uh was actually our launch customer as well.
SPEAKER_05Um who's that's a great, that's a that's a testament.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, right, exactly. And you know, and and it's like what what we're building is.
SPEAKER_05No, you need to get some business from it.
SPEAKER_01You know, to you know, it makes his company, you know, uh things things easier in his company. And we raised from a few people kind of in that, you know, whether they're customers, whether they're you know, other people who who've who've built things in the industry and they are individuals or whatever, right? So we raise, you know, we I mean we raise mostly from industry. Yeah, and we're much happier with that than you know, we're we're we're active in a lot of startup communities, and we talk to a lot of people who they took from this VC or they took from an angel who now they now they have to have monthly, you know, uh uh full days.
SPEAKER_05You gotta talk to people like me all the time who have a bunch of questions.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god, and it takes a week and a half to prepare for it every month. And it's and and it, you know, and instead we we and we raise from people who understand what we're doing.
SPEAKER_05But you know, one of the things that's difficult, you're particularly in a space where um it's not capital intensive in terms of the assets, right? Right? So typically, one of the things I studied when I was in business school was a lot about something um uh that was called the the sustainable growth equation. And what it simply says is um there is a there is a number, a percentage that you can grow your top line revenue um without having to either change your level of profitability, your asset turnover uh ratio, your leverage, and or your dividend. Um but if you want to grow higher than that number, one of those things has to change. You either have to go out and get more equity or debt, you have to actually become more profitable, you have to figure out how to reduce uh or increase the asset turnover, you've got to do something. Otherwise, you can't grow beyond that number. Most software companies struggle with that because they grow too fast, right? They actually grow so fast that they're required to go back to the market too many times to actually borrow money or to get equity, typically, right, in order to sustain their growth. Because you build once you sell many times, right? So um, how do you guys manage that? That that is a tension that exists in every single software company. How do you manage that tension?
SPEAKER_01Oh, I hope we have that in a year. Yeah. That's a good problem to have. That's a good problem to have.
SPEAKER_05Well, Luis, I'm I'm curious from your perspective, some of the challenges that you've had to overcome, mistakes that you've made that we can all learn from and your process.
SPEAKER_02Well, we finally overcame the bad years to the good years. Um was created in 2005. Uh, and we closed the company two or three times. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05You went through the Great Recession, you went to COVID.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and plus I think we realized that we never wanted to quit our jobs, we were too comfortable. She was making good money, I was making good money. It was more about my side job, making some cash dollars, and now I wasn't disciplined enough. I was trying to learn the industry, even I was in the streets. And I was growing myself into getting myself into uh ownership. My bosses sometimes would block me to be part of certain meetings. I would sneak out, sneak into the meeting, and at least collect the meeting manage to see what they're talking about. I would take them home and then send them the next day so I can at least have a conversation. Um but I realized after trying for five years from 205 to 210, even pulling our retirement out, my wife and I, my junior retirement, my wife's 401k. I told her, if we do this, I'm sure it's gonna work. We did like about$100,000 in revenues, and we pulled like$36,000 from our retirement, which was only$26,000 cash value. You gotta pay taxes on that, unfortunately. I was so embarrassed that my wife said, I guess you just call up your retirement again. It's okay. Try again. And I realized uh one of us needs to quit our job, and that's gonna be me. Um you have a better insurance than I do. You know, I never miss a day of work for nine years, including Saturdays. I felt her job was more stable. So I started doing a bunch of side jobs to create a cushion as a man of the house, I need to pay the bills. I never expected any money from her, she works great. If that I saved six months worth of mortgages and pay bills and everything, and I quit my boss. Therefore, if they were from Ghana, Oakley Construction, that was the best bosses I ever had. And I told my boss, I'm sorry. I give a 60-day notice, I finished the job the job, and October 2000 no January 2014, I woke up with a job after so many years of working and I had no choice. At work now? At work now, of course I wasn't paying myself for the robot. I was trying to make it work, but uh I had faith, my wife had faith. Um the other the lessons was uh I cannot just be doing it by myself because I told my brother and my wife I'm gonna quit the job, you guys keep coin, I bring some both some work, and already your brother, you're gonna quit first, and then your wife last because you get to work do work for home computer. So by the summer of 2014, both of them joined our team. We had$600,000 worth of work in the backlog. Now the three of us, Carlos will take care of operations, I will take a vestimity for your management, we'll buy PHR payrolls and stuff like that. We're all in our way. As a result, we now we're a$60 million company, we've been grow or growing our company. But now we notice that we're too big to be small, too small to be big. Yeah, you're in the in-between world. To get access to capital in the ways construction is measured, it's so hard to get extensive lines of credit. Yeah. Um, long-term loans could be an option. Um, we haven't been able to figure out how we jump the next step.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02The jobs that we're pursuing might be too large financially, but not in terms of experience. We need to do some injection of capital. And we're too large to be uh requiring some smaller jobs because our head grew up so much. Yeah. So we're in a situation where we're the middle class. That's right now. And there is an opportunity to grow. But you, as you were talking, you said this is exactly what we need to see all the areas where we can get access to capital that continue growing up.
SPEAKER_05Well, that's something that we can help you with, um, at least conceptually, right? Um so happy to have that as an offline conversation. But I'll tell you what I've seen that works in that in-between state is often it's um using your company as a platform business and then actually acquiring other smaller businesses as a roll-up. Um and that's where you can actually get financing. But the issue is that if you go that route, you have to actually commit to the fact that you're gonna take other people's money. And that does change the dynamics of the business. And so you have to decide: is it more important for you to kind of gut it out with your own capital and maintain that kind of control, right? Um, or can I grow this business much faster with an equity infusion that comes and may require me to actually go into the market and acquire businesses? It's not an easy question. You know, a lot of times I think people are too overly focused on control because they don't really understand what control is. You know, Rupert Murdoch owns less than 20% of News Corp, but he controls News Corp. Right? Bill Gates never owned, well, he doesn't now at least own 50%, but at one time controlled, you know, Microsoft. Control and majority ownership are not necessarily the same thing, but you know, these are really fundamental questions, and they're not easy questions. They're much more art than they are science about what you'll be comfortable with. You built a family business, and we've had an opportunity to talk to a couple of people on this podcast about family business. That's a whole nother conversation that we may follow up with you on, but the fact that you've been able to successfully build a family business and stay friends with your family and stay married is the testament of and of itself success because it isn't easy. And and I'm I'm curious when you think about that same question, I'm curious about how you think about not just the decision financially of whether you are getting outside capital, you're building, you know, from bootstrap. How do you think about partners, right, for what you do? The nature of the type of work you do, and it's similar for you, but because you're building the mechanical components that are becoming part of much larger entities, you're required to partner with a lot of the folks in a forum with folks. How do you think about those partnerships, both with companies and people? How did you think about the decision of whether you want outside capital or you're gonna bootstrap yourself? Um, and what are some of the challenges and mistakes that you've experienced that have influenced how you run the business?
SPEAKER_03I've been on all sides of this, so uh when I'm broke, which happens? Cash poor, you're sweating, you're looking for a partner, somebody to pay you out, right? When you have cash coming in and projects are moving, right? Typically I don't want a partner. So it makes me question my ask myself that real quick, why do I truly need a partner? Because I've also noticed I don't like people asking me a thousand questions and asking me to justify what I'm trying to do. Um the beauty of owning your own business, in my opinion, if it's not too big, you should make the decisions that your gut tells you make sense. If you if you make a mistake, I don't have to explain it to everybody. I just gut it out and move on. So but I I think you come to a certain point in your business, like in your case, where you have to make a decision. Do I want to go up? Am I comfortable where I am? And that's a tough decision. I mean, at my age, I'm asking myself, with all this quantum stuff going on, uh IQ and P and what's happening in this whole space, how hard do I really want to push this? And why? So I'm not very interested in legacy, like oh, I'm gonna leave something for my kids. No. My kids have their own interests. Uh my kids decide they want to come in the business, I'll do everything I can to help them. But I don't want them to ever feel pressure that they have to come join the family business. So I'm not encumbered with that problem. Having a partner is good, especially when times are hard. Because you need somebody to talk to somebody who you can go and say, you know, oh, we're really screwed up on this project. You know, the cash is tight, and you need an outlet. So right now, would I go for a partner? Probably not. Um, I'm part of a business group called Vistage, and they act essentially as my informal board of uh advisors, which helps because business being a business owner is very lonely. Work you always need therapy, you need somebody to talk to, somebody to tell them how good or how bad stuff is. So they act well as a good uh advisory board to talk to. But as I look at some of the things I'm trying to do now, the opportunities in front of me, I'm leaning to people like you to help me get. I want to get bigger with a specific goal in mind. But I want some like you guys with the financing and stuff we're talking about to help me kind of manage how much growth I can truly get. Because the other thing to have noticed is most people who work in small businesses don't have the skill set to go to big companies. So if you get too big, or the mindset, or the mindset, you're gonna have to need a different group of professionals to run that business for you. And you know, your brother, your your wife, your sister might all of a sudden not be the right person. Yeah, because now you're so big, you need a different and it's all so you gotta manage how you grow, yeah, because that could be the worst thing, it could ruin your whole family, just because now you gotta go tell your sister, I gotta go hire this guy from Yale who went to Harvard and work on Wall Street. Who is this guy talking about? Some guy because they have the right, you know. It's so uh having a partner is not a bad idea, but you some people have been successful because they have partners that stay in their own name. You're good at accounting and finance, I do business development and it's work. But no matter who you pick as a partner, I feel it's important to have the same goal. Yeah, what's the end game you're both trying to get to? And if you can't agree on the end game, then it's not gonna work. Sooner or later, there's gonna be button heads, there's gonna be something something going on.
SPEAKER_01You have to roll in the same direction. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Well, I want to uh thank you guys all for coming and doing this. This has been riveting, and uh I've learned a lot. I want to give you each a chance. If there's anything that you want to say kind of in closing, I'll start with you, Eugene.
SPEAKER_03I would say number one, thank you for this opportunity to come and you know talk about my business, listen to what you guys have to say as well. We're in different areas of business, but we all have the same struggles. And um, when we succeed, it's a beautiful thing, but it's not easy. I think that's the one message that I'd like to pass on to other people who want to be entrepreneurs. It's not an easy task, but I cannot think of a role which allows you to impact the lives of others as positively as you can. So thank you for the opportunity. I hope there are more entrepreneurs out there and uh love the opportunity to help somebody else get started in this line of work. That's great. John?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, also thank you for the invitation to be here, you know, and chat with you guys. It's been great. Um, yeah, I mean, I you know, our our our story again, it's really you know, um seeing problems out there and thinking there's gotta be a better way and building solutions to those problems, right? So, I mean, our our our measure of success, you know, more than um you know more than money, more than you know, like is how much can we impact the industry, right? You know, and and and make at least our little corner of the world a better, more efficient place, right? So that that's that's really how we measure ourselves. You know, so when when we talk in the year, you know, we're dealing with all those other growth issues, right? You know, hopefully it's you know it's it's because we made such an impact that that momentum keeps on pulling us forward. That's right.
SPEAKER_02Louise. Well, I appreciate uh the time for the invite, and it's an honor to share the table with these powerful entrepreneurs. Um, how you started this session was about housing. And SDA is not just aggressive on the intentions, actually, it's very intentional. What you're trying to do is follow your videos that you upload, you buzz a bunch of people to one neighborhood. You do force them to see it and witness what's going on. And I get frustrated because I've seen not a lot of organizations being intentional about it. Um it's okay to have people paying$3,000 in their rent, but they don't want to qualify to pay$2,200 a mortgage. Right. Um but um just want to tell you that I'm joining your fight. Thank you. I'm doing everything I can because I truly believe that it's a gods give it right to own a home. And we're doing everything we can to improve manufacturing process, no robotics, no other things, something more conventional, yeah, not too complicated to deliver that mission for sure.
SPEAKER_05Thank you. That's very powerful. And thank you all for being here, and thank you for your kind words about the work of the SDA and the work that we're doing. We get a chance to work with all three of you as clients, um, and we're grateful for that. And our commitment to you is to continue to find ways to promote you individually as organizations and our area. So, with that, I'll just thank you guys and good night. Thank you.