The Exchanges

Q Did you have a mentor that helped you through any of this when you were younger and getting started, or how did you figure your way through it?

A Well, we all have mentors. I don't know if we always call them mentors, but people that we look up to, you know, isn't somebody that, Hey, will you be my mentor? There's more of that today than ever before, which is awesome. But back then I had, yeah, I had guy like, uh, you know, Harold Jones back in my early teens, who was a former Marine gunner. On a, on a, on a helicopter, uh, during Vietnam, and he moved us to Georgia where I was living. My dad was gone. Parents got divorced, and he, he became my surrogate kind of father, big brother, whatever you want to call it. He was one. It was a guy named Fred Pinson who ran a plumbing company who hired me as a, you know, to, to do odd jobs, you know, when I was about 1516, and, and, you know, he used to dig ditches and crawl under buildings and, Uh, unclog sewer pipes and do all that kind of stuff, but he taught me the value of a real hard work, you know, just like my parents did as well. And then there were later in life, there were people like Michael O'Connor, uh, Michael owned a print shop and I bought that printing business and he taught me the value of, of how to check the Z out every day. You don't even know what the Z out is, but it's a Z out was on the cash register and you turn the key to Z and it would total up your total for the day. And, uh, and, you know, put it in different categories. That's how we used to look at st…

AI assessment note: “I had guy like, uh, you know, Harold Jones back in my early teens”

Q it's so important. So I really hope you stick with us to the end. And hear everything he has to say because it's a tremendous amount of value and I had a really great conversation. So I hope you enjoy this interview with Tom Pierce. So Tom, tell me about your experience in the military. What was it like? Did you enjoy being told what to do all the time?

A Certainly. It was, well, actually I, I ended up not being told what to do all the time. Uh, the military training drilled that into me real heavily. Uh, and that was about, uh, nine months of training, but it was actually on the first day I reported for duty. I was supposed to be, uh, an, an officer in a nuclear ammunition logistics company. And my very first day of reporting, uh, my, my new commanding officer informed me that I had been reassigned, like minutes before I even showed up. And, uh, they had seen my math background and my, my interest in computers, and yeah, this is 1981, so pretty early. And, um, they were just forming this analysis team. So I got the incredible opportunity to be as a brand new second lieutenant included in a very senior, uh, combination military civil service analysis team, immunizing, uh, analyzing ammunition and missile maintenance logistics for the army. And pretty much my entire four-year tour was spent in that analysis team learning from military and civil servants much senior, much wiser to me, uh, in the very early days of the Army's use of computers to try to manage the logistics, simulation modeling, all kinds of fascinating things. And, and yeah, I, I used this old Desktop that had a dust cover on it that was on my boss's desk, and nobody was using it, so I asked if I could just play with it. Basically, I used it to do briefing slides, …

AI assessment note: “actually I, I ended up not being told what to do all the time.”

Q And oftentimes afterwards, uh, they will end up getting into a field or, or creating a business around the thing that they were working on in the military. And they'll have full right to create some sort of IP around what they've done. Do you think there's a similarity here, uh, between the U S and the Israeli armies, or is it not common to have done what you've done?

A Well, uh, I, I don't know if it's common now. It certainly wasn't common then, you know, computers were, were brand new and I'm not even sure I had heard the term intellectual property rights back then, but certainly the things, the software that I wrote while in uniform belonged to the U S army. Um, after I got out of the army, I spent a number of months in minimum wage jobs before a defense contractor who knew of me from my time in service got ahold of me and wanted to use my experience. And then I started developing software for them for about seven years. And then after about seven years with them, I finally decided I wanted to kind of go out on my own. And I still didn't have the IP rights to anything I wrote because I was modifying code that somebody, that Boeing owned. So it really took me a long time before I, I, uh, negotiated with my employer and my customers the right to retain the, the property rights of the software I wrote. And that's quite a battle. It's still a very difficult field, but I ended up having to retain the services of a, of a, of a rather, uh, Talented intellectual property rights attorney to help me negotiate the terms and conditions of my contracts. But, uh, yeah, it, it, it's still slippery. And, and I think in some ways it's getting even slipper, slipperier as far as, uh, what are the boundary lines around what I wrote versus what I, what ideas I…

AI assessment note: “the software that I wrote while in uniform belonged to the U S army”

Q experience in working for defense contractors in those early days. Um, so you didn't have any rights over what you were coding, and I think that's common. I think when I had my tech company, we had people sign away the right to the code that they were developing. Um, because we were paying them for that code. So why should they have, uh, you know, the right over that?

A Exactly. And in fact, for me, it was third hand. It was the U S army ballistics research lab that was paying my employer to write code for them. So I wrote code for my employer who, you know, so the, the code belong to the U S army. And, um, we, we just kind of retain some of the basic ideas and structures and, you know, those are yours. Uh, you, the thoughts, the education, the learning, as long as you're not actually, you know, cutting and pasting, copying exact proprietary algorithms or anything like that. And I didn't do any of that, but certainly my way of thinking was very much shaped by the simulation modeling and logistics applications that I wrote. Both while in uniform and, uh, under the Ballistics Research Lab.

AI assessment note: “for me, it was third hand. It was the U S army ballistics research lab”

Q Would you agree or disagree that it's inevitable that that's going to happen anyways?

A I totally agree. I totally agree. Um, I think the role of regulation and governments will be very important in this part. Like this has been achieved with HIPAA compliance, for example, in the U S and Canada, there's a lot of rules about privacy and health records. Um, this is all everyday thing in defense industry, like What can you do and not do with soldiers' bodies? Uh, for civilians' bodies, it's gonna be interesting, but it's very similar to the regulation that you have by the FDA for, like, diabetes pumps or for, um, pacemakers. There's already a lot of medical devices that go through this kind of testing, so I think Neuralink will have to go through FDA compliance at some point. But it will eventually happen, of course. Like, I, I, I wouldn't do it, but of course it's gonna happen.

AI assessment note: “I totally agree. I totally agree.”

Q I would like to go into that larger issue that you overcame, but first I'm curious to know what exactly did you say to this client to get them to flip to prepay? Cause you said you told them what you needed, but I didn't hear you say at a high level that you told them what the, that there was a problem and you needed their help.

A Uh, well, I had pitched, I had pitched this, this to two, two fellas on like a bunch of strategic things, right? Including them buying us and like all kinds of things, you know, cause you know, someone giving me five million dollars for the company that would have solved it. Like, you know, I was coming up with various solutions and just one of the things on this tin. So they actually said no to most of the things, but the one thing they said yes to was I'm like, or instead of giving us millions of dollars and buying us, what if you just, Started prepaying us, instead of be paying, you know, instead of paying me net 30, And then I basically told them if you can, instead of paying me a 100,000 dollars, 30 days late, right? 30 days after the month, if you start prepaying me a 100,000 dollars, I can go from giving you this many users to four times as many users, right? So the benefit to them was they get, and they wanted more of our audience, right? But I could only get more if I could get the cashflow, right? And starts because I had to pay the Facebook's and the Googles at a certain time period. And that was worth it to them. And they were spending lots and lots of money. So in reality, the money they were giving me was, it was just, they were just fast forward paying it a little bit early. And I don't know why they said yes. They don't. I'm literally the only company in the wor…

AI assessment note: “if you start prepaying me a 100,000 dollars, I can go from giving you”

Q about his volunteering with Charity and flying his plane, which sounds so cool. I know you're gonna love this episode, and I know you're gonna love Taft. Please enjoy the show. So you were a police officer in the past, and you decided to go into sales. What happened in your life that made you go, one thing doesn't suit me anymore, and I need to do this other thing?

A It's a good question. I think there are a few things. There, there are a few elements that came together here. Uh, the first is my, my mom has been in sales all her life. Um, she was a pharmaceutical sales rep when I was a little kid, switched to selling for a big furniture company and worked her way up to their VP of sales when I was in middle school and, uh, and still today like runs a small furniture company. And that, that CEO job is a lot of selling. So first I watched my mom have, have control over her financial destiny and go from my parents having essentially nothing, um, To being, you know, they're not, they're not wealthy, but they, they do well, and she has control over how much she makes, and I found law enforcement really interesting, and I loved it, but, you know, I was coming up on 30 years old, and I had never made 30,000 dollars in a year, and I was, I was the youngest in my department to make detective. I then went on to join a federal task force, uh, and Had, I did, I did pretty well, and it just didn't matter financially and career trajectory-wise. I was waiting on the people above me in the chain of command to retire or die, and that's how you move up. It's not a meritocracy the way that, that I watched my mom thrive in one, and I thought, somewhat naively, somewhat correctly, that like, hey, I think I can do well at anything you plug me into. I, I think I …

AI assessment note: “I was coming up on 30 years old, and I had never made 30,000 dollars”

Q to say, Pandadoc is not sponsoring this. I, Do use it. I do pay for it. It is a pretty good software. So Panda doc, if you want to talk to me after this, I'm happy to, to consider a sponsorship from you. So it took you a long time to try to find an opportunity. What was that breakthrough moment for you that made it made the switch happen?

A I got a job with secret service. So the, the context here is, uh, even though I was on a federal task force, I still Was employed by my local agency. They essentially lend out and a local detective who has a skill set they want or need for, for their, uh, for whatever the task force is doing, you know, so I was on loan from my, uh, from my department. So I was making no money. I put myself through undergrad and grad school as a cop was making effectively no money. I had a bank of America credit card with like 20,000 in debt from putting myself through school on it. And was losing money just surviving. So I applied for federal jobs because a lot of the guys I work with were, it was FBI, Secret Service, DEA, and IRS. And I was cross-sworn with IRS. And so the Secret Service guys said like, hey, we do a lot of this white collar crime stuff. You should come apply with us. And so I did. And then, uh, Around, I think it was like, 2010, 2011. I can't remember exactly now. I, ah, I finally got through their process. I was essentially guaranteed a job, and then Congress didn't pass a budget, and everything froze. And I threw my hands up and said, I'm gonna go do something else somewhere interesting. I, I lived in a, a wonderful small town and then drove down the road to go to work at a small town that had more tattoos than teeth. And, uh, I was, you know, uh, I wasn't enjoying it anymor…

AI assessment note: “I got a job with secret service. So the, the context here is”

Q were introduced as someone working for a company, Uh, so the fact that you have your own company pre-qualifies you. Um, what's the difference between selling for someone else and selling for yourself? Because you have a consulting company and you've got those clients, and so you have to sell those clients on why they need revenue operations. So what's the difference between selling for yourself and selling for others?

A In the sense of how I think about it, there's zero difference, because even though I, I work for Dropbox, I very much think of myself as the CEO of my teams, and I, the fact that, that I'm not the one, you know, it's not my bank account the money is going into doesn't really matter, uh, That, and that attitude has served me well, so I've really leaned into it, but I tell all of my sales reps, you're the, you're the CEO of your role. If you are anything else, this isn't going to work. So no, I, I don't actually treat them differently at all. Um, and I, I don't sell much iceberg anymore. I, I have a, a CEO who I hired a year ago, once we grew to a point where it was hard to manage two things at once. And so I'm, I'm, Founder slash advisor more than, uh, more than in it day to day, but I still help out with sales here and there. And I'm a big believer in, there was a podcast I listened to years ago where their, their mantra, the thing they said all the time was have a mindset of plenty and be helpful. Those were the two rules for sales. Um, no one deal ever matters so much that you should do anything other than be helpful. And if you do those two things, you will succeed in sales. And it's been true for me. I, I, so I treat both sales exactly the same.

AI assessment note: “In the sense of how I think about it, there's zero difference”

Q Okay. So do you have a team now? Are you still running things by yourself or?

A No, we have a small team at the, at our largest, we were six right now, because we've come down a little bit in the pandemic. We're at three. Uh, probably we'll be adding another trainer again, pretty soon though, because it's getting to be too much for me to handle. That's what happened last time I had to get another trainer to help. Um, and the great thing about it is the principal other person that I work with really closely, which is our operations manager, is my daughter. Um, and that's really fun for us because we really enjoy working together. She's been with me right from the beginning, from 2012. So she's been, um, Right with me growing all of this and we're very well matched for each other. Um, this is something that if I were to be giving advice to people, when you think about, um, kind of your right hand man, if you will, um, don't pick someone exactly like you pick someone complimentary. Um, I am the big picture person. I am a good communicator. I'm very comfortable being in front of people. Um, my daughter is the person who can sit down and read, I'm thinking of a specific example, a 27 page master services agreement and realize that on page 21 in the third paragraph, there's something we shouldn't agree to. Uh, so that's not my forte at all to really comb through contracts and whatnot. So it's been really nice to have, um, that complimentary personality. I think …

AI assessment note: “No, we have a small team at the, at our largest, we were six”

Q What are your favorite AI tools right now?

A I mean, I have boring answers to that because it's the same thing that everybody else is playing with these days, but, uh, I, I use ChatGPT on an almost daily basis now. Um, I've found myself interestingly using it, uh, in place of Google for search on things that Google doesn't do a great job with. So, hey, what are, you know, what are other services that are similar to XYZ, for example, and You know, Google gives you websites that show the, the compilations of services that do certain things or whatever, but they, they're never, they never catch the nuance, for example, of, you know, no, I like this one because it does this. What else does that? Um, and I find that ChatGPT is actually really good for kind of helping me discover things that I wouldn't have otherwise found. Um, and then the other one that I've been playing with a ton lately is Midjourney, and, um, I've been playing with, uh, some voice AI things. Uh, there's a company called 11 Labs that has a really solid, um, uh, kind of voice transformer that, you know, you, you submit five minutes of your own voice, basically reading whatever you want, and it clones your voice. And so, um, I kind of took on a little personal experiment of, uh, generating an introduction video for Apollo 21 using only AI tools. And so I had chat GPT generate the script, and then I cloned my voice in 11 labs and, uh, had it read the script. A…

AI assessment note: “I use ChatGPT on an almost daily basis now... other one... is Midjourney”

Q work with someone, and that they were trained well, and they were able to help you do it. So I'm curious, I mean, I have a lot of questions now, basically, based on this. Uh, my, my first question is, do you think having gone through the coaching years before made it easier for you to process the, the, the events that happened and the loss that ensued? Or no?

A A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Because I had already separated my identity from the company, right? Like my clients, sometimes by accident, they would say Aldo Partners instead of Clado Partners, which was the company name, right? And I felt the same way sometimes, right? I felt the goals of the company are my goals and, and, and vice versa. So having Having done that, having that, that, that one pager that I still today send to people, I said, this is how you get to know me, these are my values, my skills, my purpose in life, really helped me a lot, because I just need to find a new home, um, for that practice. Um, what it also helped me, it helped me prepare, um, it helped me be ready for somebody to, to help me, right? Because after working with Kim Sumner, I actually, um, engaged a executive coach as well. Her name is Sandra Ruiz, and so I had with her bi-weekly sessions, uh, to talk through things, and she would reflect on what I was, we were just together, reflect on what was happening with the company and the different relationships that were important to, um, to manage that company, um, So I think I, I had become a lot more open in talking about my thoughts, my feelings, what was deepest inside me. So for sure, all that coaching helped me to, to be much more prepared for the counseling.

AI assessment note: “A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Because I had already separated my identity from the company”

Q then comes from AI, and then it's just another layer of, of awareness that you need to have when it comes to information that you should already have, hopefully, um, for any other type of outlet, right? If it is then a person who's writing for media, or if it's just a system giving you an answer, um, the kind of skill set to dissect information should be the same.

A You'd think that. But I talk to people from all over the world of different generations and different, you know, cultures, different languages, all of that. And a lot of them have a pretty strong belief in whatever it is they're talking about. They are highly confident in their beliefs. And when you ask them, you know, where did those beliefs come from? Generally, there are sources that you would be concerned about. Because they don't realize that a lot of young people in Gen Z and some millennials for sure, and definitely boomers, um, my parents included, are very confident in their beliefs and they aren't aware that the sources they are getting their information from could be biased, could be tainted. You know, uh, so for example, I have a Russian friend who's based in Belgium. And while he's got family in Russia, he can't really go back because of the war and all of that. And since the war started, he has, you know, I, I will share something that, you know, AP has said, or Zelensky has said, or someone from the West. And he'll turn it around and go, yeah, but actually, like, that's not true, and you don't know what you're talking about. Here's the reality. Right. From his point of view of what Putin has said or as Putin is doing, et cetera, et cetera. And so it's almost become difficult to be able to communicate with people if they have information that comes to them from di…

AI assessment note: “You'd think that. But I talk to people from all over the world”

Q So then why would you want to be a founder?

A Yeah, no, that's a fair point. I feel like it's never a rational choice to be a founder, uh, especially in my case. I don't know how better to put it, but even though I did it while I was still in college or high school, I mean college, uh, that was the first time I started my company. I just couldn't zone out of that feeling in some sense. I always wanted to get back to doing it and proving it again. And never really was a rational thought. I wanted to just, in fact, every year after I graduated from college, shut my company down. That was 2017, I wanted to start up again. 2018, I wanted to start an ed tech company. 2019, I wanted to create a remote health consultation platform. I wanted to build a mental health platform with a consumer focus. 2021 was when I started thinking about Shopflow. So I think it's almost like you've tasted blood once and you have to just get back to it. And I don't think it was a rational decision at all.

AI assessment note: “it's almost like you've tasted blood once and you have to just get back”

Q I'm surprised more, more people didn't find it strange that you were doing everything. If you're like, wait a minute, you're telling me to build a team, and yet you don't have a team. Why, why are you telling me to build a team, but you don't have a team?

A Because if you're speaking to me from an outward perspective, you'd think that I do, because the people that I work with become part of my team, but they just contract it, as opposed to employees. So when you email me, my assistant will respond, and it's, she's responding from my company email address, But she has her own company, but within my company, she has an email account. The same for the marketing team, the same, same for my sales person who does the sales for me, the same for my copy. So I have a team. It's just not an internal team. It's an outsourced team. Whereas now I'm going to have to have at least one member of staff internally.

AI assessment note: “So I have a team. It's just not an internal team. It's an outsourced team.”

Q clearly the operator screwed up when the, when the thing jammed, they should have started the batch over, but they didn't because they were in a hurry. So like all these kinds of things become discoverable in an audit and you have to make sure you get your things right. Uh, and I, you know, it may not sound like it's a procurement problem, but it kind of is, right?

A Yeah. It's always your problem to, to deal with. I'll, I'll give an example. Cause it, it sounds like some of the things I'm used to doing in the past, I was involved in international trade. And so I would have customers come to me and say, and you'll laugh here, but I'm serious. I want a hundred containers of chicken feet, frozen chicken feet from Brazil. And so I would have to go and do due diligence on the manufacturers or the importers or the, you know, companies, whoever it was. So that I could make sure that I was coming to them with an absolute certainty that, like, these guys are legit. Right. I, I'm working on this right now. Um, I had a client running a high risk, um, business and he wanted an additional payment processor to make sure that, you know, in case he had issues with the other ones, it wouldn't take down his business. And so I went and I started to look for people and I came across someone and I asked them a million questions. And then I knew, you know, if I was going to sign on as an affiliate for that other business and then bring this client to them, That this client was not going to have any problems because that's my reputation. If this, if this company either steals their money, doesn't provide the service or, you know, whatever happens, it's me. That's my name. It's, you know, that he's not, he can't do anything to that business, but he can make sure …

AI assessment note: “Yeah. It's always your problem to, to deal with. I'll, I'll give an example.”

Q When did you realize that you had dyslexia and did, were you aware that there was something different in the way you processed information before you got the diagnosis or?

A The diagnosis was back in school. So when I was. 16 or 17 years old was when I was diagnosed. Um, but before that time, I, I was actually, I'm in school, I was actually very poor, all of my subjects, and I was just struggling and kind of mumbling my way through the, through the school years, and so it was, It was quite a tough, uh, tough kind of education for me because I didn't excel in any subjects. I could barely do a lot of the subjects, um, particularly the, the key ones that, you know, math and English and sciences, uh, which, you know, require you to retain a lot of information and, and, uh, and that was how success was really defined in those subjects. And I really, really struggled with, with that. Um, but unfortunately before my diagnosis, I always just, Was, was assuming that I wasn't very good at school. Um, and that was just me. And it was, it was really obviously disheartening for me. I was in all the lowest, the lowest classes for these, uh, for these subjects. Sometimes my classes were just like two or three people in them. Um, and yeah, they weren't very fun. You know, we're, we're learning the basics all the time. We tended to be given, um, extra time in the exams, but then extra time meant that you had to arrive early for exams. Um, and that might, you know, going into school earlier and you can often get into school earlier. So I never used the extra time. A…

AI assessment note: “when I was. 16 or 17 years old was when I was diagnosed.”

Q The GMP in your situation is saying that the Indonesian factory is following it or just yours in the US?

A Just ours in the US. And we're in the process of working with the Indonesian government to help have them follow the same FDA guidelines, and it's our, we're operating from that same level in Indonesia, but I can't make that same claim because a GMP facility doesn't exist over there. What I can say is, and I'm sitting at my office desk right now, as you and I are having a conversation, if I were to drop a bite of food on my desk, My production facility floor is more hygienic and more clean right now in this moment in the middle of the day than my desk is. I mean, the, the GMP requirements are very, very high. There's no external contaminants. We have HEPA filtration systems everywhere. There's hairnets, there's gloves, there's shoe coverings, there's, uh, clean hygienic, um, smocks and, and accoutrements that people have to wear just to enter the production facility. And if they ever leave the production facility for a break or, you know, whatever, whatever need be, they have to go through that whole process once again, before they're allowed back in. So it's really, really a clean and orderly environment where we take a lot of pride that if At any moment somebody could stop by and we give you a tour of our facility, and it's, it's really sterile. I mean, it feels almost cold, right? It's not an inviting place, but it is a very safe and well thought out environment.

AI assessment note: “Just ours in the US.”

Q What was the, the next kind of revenue mark where you felt stuck from, from after that 10, after you replaced the CFO?

A So from 10, the next place we landed was 25, right? And that didn't feel stuck. That felt like we couldn't get enough done in the right amount of time. And when I say that we couldn't get enough done, to me, as we have people from a previous season that are involved in the business, They're unconsciously incompetent in their own right, right? They don't know what they don't know. So I started having conversations with the sales manager about what are the number of turns that an average customer is going through? How are you increasing average order value? What's the throughput penetration on, you know, these three skews? And it looks as though I'm speaking a foreign language to that person. It's not because they're unintelligent, but they were, they were brilliant and incredible to get from five To 20, to 25, whatever the number was. But knowing that from 25 to 50, these, these details have to start being on the forefront. We can't keep doing more of what we've been doing, expecting to get massively different results. And so by asking those questions and seeing like, okay, he doesn't quite know what I'm talking about. I mean, he gets it conceptually, but we have no idea how to impact those. It's okay. On one side, I can pay for his training, which is part of our corporate culture. Every employee gets 1250 bucks a quarter to invest as a CFIT into continuing education to better t…

AI assessment note: “So from 10, the next place we landed was 25, right?”

Q So what kinds of privacy issues do end users and brands face?

A There's really kind of a couple key areas. One is, is, is around, um, advertising. And the other is around on what's called on page digital objects. And so let me kind of explain why each of those are important. So advertising, especially what's called programmatic targeted advertising really funds the open web that we've grown used to. That's why content is free and 80 to 90% of news is paid for by ads. Although we say we see paywalls from time to time. Digital ads are over 70% of all ads, um, in marketing. It's about a half a trillion spend globally. So that's, that's the one side of it. Now digital objects, which may be a little bit harder to conceive of, those are like tags on pages, pixels, beacons. Uh, they, they enable commerce on the web and. 95% of marketing websites use Google analytics, which is a very well-known, um, Example of this, but there's other, other tags out there too. Facebook has pixels that have gained some notoriety and, um, and there's many more, but these, these allow, um, Measurement of conversions to know if somebody saw an ad or took an action later, are those two connected? And, um, and that's a really the, the two, the two key parts of it. But the problem is that both online advertising and on-page digital objects may sell and share data, which violates newly enacted consumer rights. Newly enacted, I say in the US, because as we record this on Ja…

AI assessment note: “both online advertising and on-page digital objects may sell and share data, which violates”

Q How can companies become compliant for these new laws? Would it be sufficient to just say we're GDPR compliant and that's good enough? Or is there differences in actual compliance for the US?

A There is some merit to that. If you, if you plan and you orient around the most stringent laws in the world, if you're, say you're a global business, then you're not wrong. It's much better, in my opinion, to do that than to try to geofence your users and try to do the Virginia thing for Virginia residents and the Colorado thing for Colorado residents and the California thing for California residents because, uh, IP identification is not infallible. So yes, if you're a global business, many already have managed to the stringent elements of GDPR and then set that as their global standard. Um, but there's other things I would say companies should do beyond that because it really starts with assigning a leader for your data privacy program, and it doesn't need to be as formalized as the data protection officers that are required under GDPR. Um, you can, if you're just operating in the US, for example, just, just assign someone, um, whose, whose point on that. The second thing though is really understanding where your data is going and mapping your data across the organization, because many businesses just don't know. They don't know where their own data is kept. They don't have all their databases in alignment, and they don't know what their vendors are doing with the data either. So knowing where your pockets of data are and inventorying that, and there's, there's good frameworks…

AI assessment note: “There is some merit to that... managed to the stringent elements of GDPR”

Q So how can companies figure out how to map their data then?

A If you pick one of these frameworks, like NIST is a good one. If you pay attention to what's called PII, personally identifiable information or sensitive data, and again, sensitive data would be health, race, religion, religion, politics, union membership, immigration status. You, um, and you recognize that your, your data sprawl is likely, even if you're a small business, just track which databases you're using, um, what APIs you may have set up or data flows or data transfers to external partners. And why this is so important is because there's the right in, in California, um, for access and delete, meaning contact a business and require that business to tell that, to tell you all the data that they have on you and then delete it if you request and, and correct it also. This is a very hard thing to do to access, delete, and correct if you don't know where the data is. So that I think is really, really key around data flow. Where it's moving between systems and this full life cycle concept. What are the rules you want to set for the people who own that data and operate that data? And what third parties are, do you want to, um, do you want to honor as well? So I think that's, that's a good place to start. There are, um, consultants out there that can help you, um, get started with that. And there's software like boltives that helps automate the process, but that's where I would…

AI assessment note: “just track which databases you're using, um, what APIs you may have set up”

Q How are you able to discover the malware and these other issues that these brands are facing and their end users are dealing with?

A We have two technologies which are scanning and blocking, and the scanning that we do Is, which is protected by several patents is, is to undertake user journeys. So we visit websites, we, uh, simulate real users, and we do this in partnership with these websites. So if we're working with a travel company, we might be business travelers. If we're working with an athletic company, we might be college athletes. If we're working with a consumer goods company, we might emulate young parents and you can do this Emulating the patterns, the browsing history, the purchase history of these different personas. And we scan, meaning we, we go through the customer journey, we visit websites, we, we click on things, we, we browse things, we, we consume ads, and we record everything that's going on to see if anything contains malware, contains Trojans, contains redirects, malicious browser extensions, if those are resident in the ads. And then that's, that's the scanning part. But then we supplement that with blocking, which is everything I've described to you so far requires no integration. But the, um, the blocking portion is, is a line of code that then sits on websites. And then when one of these signatures comes up, one of these problems comes up, we can block it and replace that with a good ad and make sure that the user experience and the revenue and the marketing reach aren't interrup…

AI assessment note: “we simulate real users... and we record everything that's going on to see if anything contains malware”

Q So is there anything we haven't talked about that you'd like to add?

A If we think about where marketing is going and where the world is going, I guess that there's been this, this movement. Um, I think if we take a little bit of history, I think there's a nice history lesson here because privacy was a non-event really until about 15 years ago. No one really talked about privacy and the origin of tracking on the web Came about because of changes in media and with the rise of the internet, and more importantly, with the rise of search engines, you got this starting point for web surfers where people weren't using the web like they used to use magazines, like the dawn of the internet, you were going to MSN, you're going to AOL, you're going to Yahoo, and that's the destination. That's where all your content was. So if you're buying a car, you're going to go to Yahoo, you're gonna go to MSN, you're gonna go AOL, and you're gonna research. But then when search engines came around, The audience fragmented and you've got all these different places where you can visit sites and learn about cars. And that's where cookies came along, right? We didn't, we haven't spent a lot of time talking about cookies here, but the, the first unique cookie was, was invented in 94 by Netscape by a young engineer who was simply trying to allow a browser to remember, um, Private privately and anonymously remember a user that had signed in or had something in their shopping …

AI assessment note: “We didn't, we haven't spent a lot of time talking about cookies here”

Q The company is called handprint, but we all, we often talk about footprints, right? If you're going hiking somewhere, or if you're creating carbon through whatever activities we use the word footprint. Why did you choose handprint?

A Footprint is the sum of all the negative impact you or company has on the world. And so it's a very commonly used term in, in business and sustainability. And also, of course, of course, we talk about footprints on the moon. And so it's like leaving an imprint, but the, the flip side of footprint is handprint. There is a, it's a scientific term that is not so popular, but it basically captures all the positive impact you're creating in the world. And there's an entire scientific methodology that mainly was designed by people at MIT that tries to help organizations figure out what is your positive impact in the world. And while business over the last 3040 years has done quite a lot of work in trying to optimize the measurement of their negative impact, this has often come at the expense of Measurement for the sake of measurement. And so what Handprint tried to do is really provide a counterfactual, an alternative perspective, an alternative approach to how companies should think about their environmental responsibility. And our overarching thesis is that the environmental responsibility of an organization should not be limited to simply reducing its negative impact. There's a much more aspirational goal to be found in working with companies to create a positive impact in the world. That appeals more to employees. It appeals more to customers, and it has A much better alignment a…

AI assessment note: “the flip side of footprint is handprint... it basically captures all the positive impact”

Q I haven't really seen them. There'll be like, save the children foundation or the UNICEF and these other kinds of things. And, and when you get to checkout, they'll go, oh, would you like to add a dollar for this thing? My answer is always no, because I don't know where the hell it's going. And why should I have to pay for it? The company should pay for it.

A So you're pinpointing the two critical barriers to success in the impact space for, from a corporate perspective. One is. Who's paying for it, right? The reality is it should be the company that at least ostensibly makes the contribution, right? So if you're asking a customer like, Hey, do you want to pay five dollars extra? The customer doesn't have a very interesting experience because if they want to do this, they might as well do private donations, right? They can just give to an NGO directly. So that's not very interesting. Secondly, if you're doing it in a way that doesn't give The customer end to end transparency on what is happening. Then you're really asking them, please have faith in me. I'm going to do something good with this money that you throw in the black box and trust us something good is going to happen. And that's also not a very appealing value proposition because more often than not, customers are quite skeptical and rightly so because they've been deceived many a time by companies making a variety of false claims, or at least claims that are not entirely true. So the way this would work from our perspective at Handprint is that one, we encourage all our customers, our corporate clients, that they should embed impact in the price. Does that mean that they are not going to increase the price? Well, that is something that's hard to figure out in advance, but …

AI assessment note: “you're pinpointing the two critical barriers to success in the impact space”

Q What was your actual business model? What was your newspaper about?

A So our newspaper was called the local planet weekly, and we really wanted to cover our local planet. Um, it was the same sort of paper. Um, and maybe not everybody's seen these, but, um, the village voice, LA weekly, Chicago reader, those sorts of the stranger in Seattle, Willamette weekly in Portland, those are sort of the biggies, but they're known as alternative newspapers. Um, usually come out on a weekly cycle. They try to do more in-depth stuff, more critique. Uh, they also cover a lot of local culture, arts, fashion, things going on about town. The business model is the paper is free to the reader. They can just go pick it up. The it's, um, supported by advertising. Um, you know, if I could get a quarter for every issue that people picked up, I would have been rich, but that's not the model. Um, and so it's all, all definitely advertiser driven, and this was happening at a time when the whole advertising driven model was being completely turned on its head because of the internet, right? That's when a lot of this advertising driven content started showing up and also classified advertising just went away because there was a thing called Craigslist, which was new then. And, um, believe it or not, also one thing that sustains a lot of alternative newspapers, especially in their early days is sex advertising or sex oriented advertising. So things like strip clubs, um, sex t…

AI assessment note: “The business model is the paper is free to the reader... supported by advertising.”

Q One thing that wasn't clear to me the last time we talked that still isn't clear to me is After she died, what happened with the kids? Did you continue to live with them? Did they go with, like, their grandparents? Like, what, what happened?

A She had three sons, um, and they were all from previous relationships. They weren't any of our biological kids. And so, um, the oldest one who was, uh, when her, when his mom passed away was 17, um, Wanted to stay with me. His dad said, you should come live with me in Las Vegas. And, um, Brad was his name said, no, A, I feel like this is my home and B, you know, I have serious medical issues from Porphyria as well. I'm in no state to pick up and move to a whole nother community and find doctors and all that other stuff. I'm just not ready to do that. Um, the, his two half brothers who were, Walt and Chris, who were younger, did stay with their dad who lived in Spokane. He lived, you know, a few blocks away, frankly. Um, my thought at the time was, You know, I, I didn't have a lot of respect for their dad after some of the stunts he had pulled. You know, everybody has stories about that sort of situation, but I felt like what those kids needed was some peace. They didn't need any more stress from illness or parents fighting or anything else. They needed some stability in their life. And could I deliver that? I don't think I was in a position then. I still had a very sick kid to look after. I had a business that I was still trying to run. I was pretty depleted. Um, I had no legal claim on them. Like I hadn't adopted them. I wasn't officially their parent. And so it just seemed li…

AI assessment note: “the oldest one... Wanted to stay with me... his two half brothers... did stay with their dad”

Q I thought you said the name of this illness once or twice, but I've never heard of it. What is it? And how, how did they both get at the same time?

A What the heck is it? So it's called porphyria and it's actually a class of diseases. Um, and the way it works, your body produces a chemical called heme. It's part of hemoglobin, which most people know. So heme is a molecule that transfers oxygen around the body. You need it. It's a very crucial thing. When your body synthesizes heme, it's an eight step process. You know, if you remember high school chemistry that, you know, this, then this, then this, right? Um, if your body, and at the end of each of those steps, there are byproducts that are left over from the chemical reactions. And your body produces enzymes to clean up those byproducts of whatever that step was. So the, the disease family porphyria is you lack one of those enzymes from one of those eight steps. So there's eight different types of porphyria. And what happens is these porphyrins as they're known that can build up if they're not cleaned up by enzymes. Go on to become a neurotoxin in your body. They can attack any voluntary or involuntary nervous system throughout your body, which makes porphyria a very hard disease to diagnose because it looks like everything else, you know, because if it attacks this nervous system, it looks like a disease of that nervous system, not of the blood basically. And because it's blood, it can go anywhere. So it can cause all sorts of problems. And, and it, it really does look di…

AI assessment note: “So it's called porphyria and it's actually a class of diseases.”

Q put the effort into promoting in those regions and therefore I don't have that response. So with that caveat, Um, if you're a brand with a product revenue, whatever, and you're looking to expand, how do you position your website or your content with SEO? And how do you think about that so that you can target those outside of paid ads, right? Cause again, your goal is, is organic.

A First of all, you have to think if your tool is language specific or not, this is like the basic thing. If it's language specific, then probably the. Solution would be like half content for each language. Uh, that's the easiest way. And probably as you're, as we're doing a podcast here, probably meet people within the region, more people within the region. Then assumption is hypothesis that you will gain more traffic from certain regions. So one trick, for example, that I'm using, uh, is like, I'm creating most of my content in English. Like I know a couple of languages, but like English is the language that I use the most. Uh, so when I'm creating content, uh, I'm using a little bit of technology to rewrite the content in different languages. So basically I'm using DeepL, uh, as a tool, uh, to rewrite the, everything what I write on my blog and translate it into languages that I'm interested in. Uh, this way Google starts to understand my website, uh, that like it's in a couple of different languages. It's scalable. Like it's just adding a little bit of money to DPL to translate it into different languages. Uh, so this is the easiest way, but like you have to understand that it's rewritten using machine learning. Uh, so it will not be perfect, but some of the tools that I worked with are not language specific. So for example, like the tool that I co-founded, which was DevSchoo…

AI assessment note: “First of all, you have to think if your tool is language specific or not”