Gold mines with no shovels

David Au-Yeung: I would love just for AI to give me a call as I'm driving home and have a conversation with me and ask me questions about how the meetings went. And that should help drive the decisions for you and everybody else. Right, so why do people need to type in their CRM anymore? Makes no sense.

John Ling: Everyone's asking if AI will take their jobs. At one freight company we work with, it did the opposite. Today, Flipp's co-founder on why most good businesses are sitting on a gold mine with no shovel and what to do about it on Monday. Welcome to Owners & Experts, candid conversations with Canadian business owners about growing a five to twenty million dollar business. Last episode, Jason Cole told us golf and lunches don't close deals. Today is personal. My guest is David Au-Yeung. He co-founded Flipp with three Waterloo classmates back when it was called Wishabi. He led engineering and people as a group past 400 employees, and today he's my partner at CollectiveXP. He also hired me back in twenty twelve, so today I get to ask him things I've never asked him before. So before we go to Flipp, something I've been wanting to ask you. do you see Microsoft's ~ exit packages for about sixty thousand people?

David Au-Yeung: Yeah, it's ~ very interesting. It's very interesting. Yeah, we saw that. ~ I I I just don't know how many of the sixty will take it. Now obviously I don't think anyone has very deep detail about what was offered, but ~ I think coming from the chief HR officer's perspective in this strategy, they're trying to execute this in the most transparent way. Which I can applaud. Because ~ anytime a company's going through a layoff and ~ ~ we I had to execute one of those, it was very difficult. It's like, you know, like no one's very happy about it. you know, you're trying to keep it hidden. There's so many different versions of it. I've heard so many different versions. You know, some ~ come into work at ten AM, boom, Zoom call, in person call,

John Ling: Yeah. Yeah.

David Au-Yeung: you have a manager in HR, manager says a statement, they're out. So I in my opinion, I think this is a good approach. ~ it's something that, ~ ~ other companies have done, right?

John Ling: Why do you think it's happening though, right now?

David Au-Yeung: ~ well I think for sure a lot of these ~ large companies, large tech companies, hyperscalers, they've they've they're investing a lot of capital into AI and compute. And

John Ling: Mm. Mm-hmm.

David Au-Yeung: I think it's just from their CFO's perspective, also looking at ~ their cost going forward and ~ essentially right sizing their cost. Yeah, and probably looking out into the future and really thinking about ~ what is the real number of staff that they need, right? Maybe the new organizational structure with AI now being a core tenet of how they execute. yeah, the whole market is ~ there's a lot of priced expectation for what all of this will become in the future. ~ we all know the whole AI, ~ the the the whole wave, this is a really huge change in in the world. It's gonna drive a lot more productivity. ~ just like kind of dot com back in ninety nine, two thousand, you know, that was like the peak. Hey, internet has changed the world, right? a lot of the companies back then, they no longer exist. So I think it's ~ ~ ~ decoupling the companies and the hype behind all of the companies out there, ~ ~ dis decoupling that from the technology and what the technology can empower is ~ is like two separate things. But if hey, if your mom is really good at it, maybe you can give her some of your money.

John Ling: ~ well she she is whatever money I have in Taiwan she takes care of it. So yeah. Yeah.

David Au-Yeung: wow. Does she charge you a management fee?

John Ling: No. what was Flipp actually like inside? Not the press release version, how you actually feel.

David Au-Yeung: which kind of Flipp, like which version? ~ Flipp Flipp, current Flipp, Wishabi Flipp. Okay, okay.

John Ling: I guess let's start from the beginning. Yeah. Wishabi Flipp. Wishabi Flipp. Yeah.

David Au-Yeung: So ~ I don't know if people know, ~ but just like very quick background Flipp, you know, weekly flyers, coupons. I think when we stopped executing there or or like operating in inside the company, we had around like sixty million weekly shoppers all across North America. you know. We sold the company in 2023 to a private equity firm. And I think like looking at the numbers and you know, still close with you know the CEO of the management team there ~ across all the platform and the company that they merged with in Europe, they have around 400 million ~ consumers shopping the platform now across I think like 27 countries and regions. So it's pretty incredible, incredible what we started. But going back to it, and now it's very corporate. So going back to early days. Our name was not called Flipp, it was called Wishabi. So I started the company with three other of my friends from university, ~ Wehuns Tan, Matthew Chung, and David Myers. We all went to Waterloo Combench 2004. ~ yeah, so in the beginning it was ~ a lot of grinding. It was a lot of grinding. I remember my wife told me we only had five years. ~ you know, I I'm good to not make any money for five years, but afterwards I had to get a job. ~ so I think in those days, you know, we were in our mid to late 20s. ~ we were able to just go a lot harder. ~ and I would say that you know, youth, the the not having enough experience, but having that ~ that mindset to dream, dream about what ~ can become versus what is currently there, allowed us to really take advantage. So when we were building Flipp. We actually had another company. ~ well, it was the same company, but we had another product. It was called Wishabi. It was comparing online e-commerce deals like cameras and whatnot. But for Canadians and comparing prices across all retailers in Canada and the US, we were a little ahead of ahead of the time. ~ we were doing, I believe, like two to three million a year. ~ we partnered with Microsoft. ~ I remember Microsoft shopping in Canada. If you go to Bing.com slash shopping, that thing was written by me and and other two other guys. ~ so I think I I I was never afraid back in the Wishabi days of building stuff. ~ I really liked it when things were difficult. When things when people thought things were hard, it excited us even more. So that was our culture. Our culture was ~ you know all about the entrepreneur spirits. and the drive behind it. ~ ~ and we can talk about all the values that we then ~ encapsul we we we we created and ~ we ironed out as we scaled because we needed to hire a lot more people who reflected those values and you know you being one of them. Yeah, but those are early days, man. It was ~ it was a lot of fun. You know, we didn't look at work like work. Monday was really fun.

John Ling: remember ~ I'm not sure if you remember when I came in for the first interview at Wishabi. ~ it was Halloween, I think 2012. And ~ yeah I remember when I walked in the first thing I feel because I came from a very corporate ~ experience and the first thing I saw was a bunch of people in like dressed up in costumes running around very different than what I normally expect and at that time I think we all ~ Wishabi and Flipp already had the cultural ~ values. Do you want to ~ share a little bit about that?

David Au-Yeung: Yeah, sure, sure. ~ we I think, you know, when people think about culture, a lot of times you think about statements on a wall. Right. And obviously we had those kind of you know core values that we talked about. but the key thing ~ that people have to remember is culture is what's observed and what's seen and what's lived. It's not what you talk about. And I think what a lot of companies the issues that they run into as they scale is that they try to be something else while still s reminiscing about the old days. And then people can see through all that stuff. So now now I'll tell you what those values were in the early days. You know, I would call it like growth stage of into Flipp from Wishabi. ~ you know, it was the three H's, you know, I remember Wehuns, myself and a few other guys, we were in a room and we were just like, Say, hey, we gotta scale, we gotta hire people. We gotta hire people based on value. So we ideated a lot and reflected on what made us successful and what made us pumped to work with other people like that. It was ~ hungry, humble, and highly intelligent. So the three H's. And a lot of the people, I mean, I don't know if any Flipp people listened to this. If you're on the HR team before, you know, we talked a lot about hiring based on those three individual characteristics, right? ~ and ~ for example, hunger. Is reflected in what we've seen in when we're interviewing and talking to people about what they have achieved in the past. Like that they actually have this hunger to like this curiosity to do something better, to kind of, you know, to do something that's not the norm. highly intelligent is ~ obviously from IQ, but also EQ. Are they able to work with people? Are they able to think about other people's perspectives? And humility is ~ a very important one. It's a challenging one because as people get better. As we grow, we start thinking that we are, you know, really good. And then that is an issue. And I think most people and most companies fail because of that. And humility is to be able to take feedback, but also know very confidently what you're good at and what you're not good at, and be able to talk about it. So I'd say those are like the the three very important ~ characteristics. And then on the team level, we had you know ~ the reinvention mindset. So we apply that to, for example, industries. We were looking into ~ how consumers save money. And I I remember when ~ we were doing the other business, it was going okay. And I still remember Matt Whehem's, he caught they called me. They're like, hey, ~ have you looked into how people browse and shop on a weekly basis? I was like, yeah, like flyers. And I remember we actually talked about that a year before. I don't know if they remember, but I was like, hey, I think that's really stupid. Why do they use this? way to shop. So fast forward, we were thinking, hey, how do we ~ deliver the deals to the people on a weekly basis instantly? And luckily it was the iPhone at that time. Mobile phones were the wave. ~ So timing worked out very well. Yeah. And then we want to reinvent the way how the business model was. Right. And I remember because you worked at one of the competitors, ~ Quebecor. So you guys would digitize the flyer for how much of a year your annual contract? A few hundred K?

John Ling: If the if the no no, if the retailer is printing with us, because that budget is like what, ~ forty million, right? ~ it becomes a added service, value added service. So it otherwise

David Au-Yeung: Yeah, yeah.

John Ling: we would charge you know, a few hundred K to do this, yes.

David Au-Yeung: Yeah, a few hundred K. And then when we looked at it, and then obviously not not to ~ not to say anything too negative, but the experience that you guys provided back then was subpar. ~ and ~ one key unlock was Matthew Chung, one of my other co-founders, he actually worked at Microsoft and he worked on the the Bing Maps team. And he knew about, you know, using tiles, zooming in and now, like, you know, getting really ~ being able to stream in very ~ High density and high resolution images very quickly and that interaction. He told me about it. It was Christmas break. I locked myself in a room and I just re-reengineered the whole thing. ~ built the first version, and then I'm like, hey, we have to take look at this. And then he just went and started selling it. So I think we reinvented the cust the end consumer experience that and then used that to then discover and learn how the industry pays for this thing. And then, ~ ~ my co-founders are they're geniuses. Matt and Wehuns, they realized there's like a huge marketing ~ engine behind this whole thing. Like hundreds of millions and billions of dollars being spent to target the consumer. So we thought, well, why charge to digitize it when we can do that for free, get all the content, and let's build a destination where consumers will come. Very difficult to business to build, I would say. You know, doing again is hard, but ~ we were very proud of it because actually I was at a conference on Thursday. It was ~ the annual Canada Private Board Award. I'm one the ~ people voting on it. And I sat beside this lady and she was like, Flipp, I use it. I used it to save money. Still, I'm like, this is pretty feels pretty good. So yeah, our culture is all about reinvention at that time. And ~ it was really fun. Yeah.

John Ling: Awesome. So I'm not I'm not sure if you remember, but ~ because of that culture, ~ I actually I remember after the interview, the first interview, I was like, okay, I kinda wanna I want to work here. It's it's interesting. Even though this was a group that took whatever I built back at Quebecor and yeah, all my I saw all my customers go to this platform. I was like, interesting. Okay. And I understood right right there. It's a very engineering first approach to solve the problem in a different way. So yeah, at that time I already thought about, okay, I want to join this company. And ~ I remember we were going through a really fast-paced growth. ~ so much so, remember when when ~ the head of QA, Durwin and myself, we had to sit in the hallway so that like whenever

David Au-Yeung: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Ling: yeah, people are playing ping pong, the ping pong ball will hit us like while we're sitting in the desk. ~ but the key thing is that no one complains. I don't think anyone complained about that growth of the the speed because there was that feeling of commo camaraderie and the the value that we all believe that there's a better way. Yeah. So that was really good. Now yeah.

David Au-Yeung: Yeah, that was a really good time. Really good time.

John Ling: There's one thing that during that around that time, ~ I remember I was ~ during one of our one on one coaching sessions, I was telling you that my wife, I My wife and I have a little bit of a conflict in terms of ~ I'm at work all the time, so I don't do it like ~ or I feel like I'm doing a lot of the housework, but she doesn't feel that way. ~ and at that time I was like, it's so frustrating. I was telling you that. Do you remember what you told me? No?

David Au-Yeung: No, I hope I I by the way, I'm not I'm not a marriage counselor in any way. So hopefully hopefully I gave you good advice. I have no idea. I don't remember.

John Ling: No, no, you're not. Yeah, but you Yeah. So you told me that ~ it doesn't matter and there's no point in calculating like how how who's doing what amount, because if you're alone, right, you would have done a hundred percent of it. So when you have a partner like that, ~ it doesn't matter if they're doing thirty percent or seventy percent. You're as long as you two are both putting your effort towards their growth or

David Au-Yeung: ~ no.

John Ling: the family. That's all that matters. Yeah. It was really good. I still think about that. Yeah.

David Au-Yeung: Okay, that's really good. Okay. You know what? I gotta give credit to the originator of the person that gave me that advice. Yeah, so ~

John Ling: okay. Where did it come from?

David Au-Yeung: yeah, so my wife and I, my wife Anna and I, ~ before we got married, we were going through this pre-marriage counseling ~ you know, session with the pastor at our church, Pastor Christine. ~ she's a good friend of mine, Christine and her husband Rich. ~ great people. So I remember I was talking to her and I remember one of the sessions, she told me she's ~ ~ ~ ~ when there are two couples together and you're thinking about what's fair and people think 50-50. But she says, you know, she told us, I still remember that she told us, you know, the the thing, the mindset is to think you gotta give your hundred percent. Even the p person gives zero because ~ the relationship being together is more important than counting. And I've lived like that since so I gotta credit her. So ~ so it was legit. That the feedback the advice was legit. It came from a legit source. Yeah.

John Ling: Yeah. No, it's it's it's great. I still think about that and like I feel like because of that very happily married. So I like no just yeah, thank you for that. It's it was really good. We we I don't think that

David Au-Yeung: Okay, okay. Well thank you, Christine then.

John Ling: I don't think that even tell tell you about what happened since, but yeah, so everything's good. Okay, we're gonna shift gears a bit. ~

David Au-Yeung: Okay. Sure.

John Ling: you didn't have to do anything after Flipp, so why why do this CXP thing?

David Au-Yeung: Yeah, so growing up, my childhood, ~ I was all about team sports. I grew up in a very diverse community. ~ had some great friends. ~ some of them I still hang out with. My elementary school friends, Marcus, Gary, you know, you guys listening, Chevy, my best friend, and who also worked at Flipp after. ~ I just remember after school it was playing basketball and ~ you know, baseball, hockey. I really love team sports. So for me, even if you fast forward to high school, same thing. Everything was team based. And then university, ~ ~ I went to Waterloo for computer engineering. It was very challenging, but I remember the only reason why most of us passed was because we just worked as a unit. So we had guys who were like amazing at taking notes. My roommate Dave Wang took the best notes. My job was to just listen in class. So we always had like a different position to play. and I would connect with Wehuns, Matt Chung, David Myers just to like see if we could help each other out. So I really like that. ~ after we sold the company, you know, I wanted to just work with my friends and build some stuff together. I wanted us to have ~ more control over how we did it. ~ when we built Flipp, we were young, we built something that was venture back. was was able to be venture backed. And that's why we took that path. But I think going forward, I just wanted to build some stuff with my friends that we can be proud of that is long term. And that's why it's CollectiveXP. And going back to why we focus on this SMB space, you know, Canadian business owner between five to twenty million is ~ yeah, you know, my family we immigrated here. My dad had a small business. My aunt, she had a small business. Everybody around me from my community, ~ ~ we had small businesses. ~ it was really difficult to get a corporate job. So I was like entrepreneurial from just living through my my teenage years into my my adult years. So I just thought, hey, you know, these people with the l ~ smaller businesses, ~ they won't really get they don't really get much access to ~ technology. They don't really have access to what automation can mean for them. And then we came from that world of ~ ~ venture backed software builder. So I just thought, hey, can we ~ ~ help these guys out? I remember our first client was ~ ~ ~ another partner of ours, Steve Choi, his friend from high school.

John Ling: Yeah.

David Au-Yeung: And that was a very simple, to us, a very simple thing was how do we help them run their software engineering team much more efficiently at a much lower cost? And we did that. ~ it felt very good to be able to help our community.

John Ling: Awesome. Yeah. So how what do you think that this is because it's nostalgia, ~ no, we miss that growth phase, or is this just because ~ ~ ~ that's that's how that that's a mark that's a people that you want to help?

David Au-Yeung: ~ I think mm I think businesses if people start off with business with the intention of it's an opportunity, the market is good, let's make a lot of money. I think that is ~ while it can be pretty fun and it's really great when you succeed, it can be a very empty thing. ~ ~ like what I I'm always thinking about why, like why do I do this? Why do I choose some of the decision? Why why did I make some of the choices I made, right? Why do I work with these guys? I think the why is very important. And people have to be excited about the why. For me, the why is working with my friends and ~ and I and try to figure out if there's a way to make it really work well with my friends and also tackle the space that we feel happy to help those people. No, whether or not it's a huge moneymaker or not. still remains to be seen, but I would, ~ ~ to my ~ ~ point earlier about reinventive mindset, I would love to figure out a way to give all of what we know to the whole community so that they can just use it.

John Ling: Awesome. Cool. And we're totally aligned on that mission. So that's good.

David Au-Yeung: Yeah. We should just give out all the stuff that ~ so John doesn't really talk too much about himself, but ~ he's quite good with automating things. he's done his he's created his own ~ tooling, his own AI chief of staff. John is a very organized person, if if you if people don't understand. Like I'm more of the this is the vision, and then I kind of forget the rest ~ it. ~ so we should give away everything that you built so people can just use it.

John Ling: I'm okay with that. And I just want to say that I want to be an organized person. I just I realize that AI has been such a big help for me to actually be that. So yeah, I want to be and now I feel like I am able to. Okay. So let's ~ go back to the shift, right? you mentioned dot like the AI the AI wave seems like the dot com wave. ~ how do you like how do you see the current AI wave right now? Where are we in terms of If you compare it back to the dot com wave, where are we in the wave right now?

David Au-Yeung: ~ during the dot com wave I was just graduating and I remember you know ninety nine I went to Waterloo and in computer engineering and then I was told by people earlier than us, man, hit the lottery, you get such good jobs and and then you know, two thousand happened. Right. So ~ so then we couldn't get a job. ~ I don't think it's gonna be like that because a lot of the dot com ~ wave was just a concept of XYZ.com. And there's a lot of hype behind it. But I think if you kinda look behind the substance of what AI can enable, I think it's ~ very tangible. Right. ~ I think when you you and I, like so John, your background is in product design and you love UX and all that stuff. So as you've seen people's starting point back when Google was coming up in the early two thousand was instead of ~ ~ AltaVista Yahoo AOL, they started internet with just a search. And I think now people's expectation is that they're gonna interact with all of the information and all the knowledge out there from a conversation or a voice conversation. so if you think about all of the typical B2B SaaS software that's out there, you have to log into system A, you gotta do this thing. You gotta log into system B, you gotta do this thing. I think all of those interfaces in the near future. may go obsolete because why do you need to do that when you can just talk to an agent and an agent understand the context and and then can do all that for you. So I think it can change the game in the in the interaction. And then really interesting thing is because people on the as a consumer side is already so used to doing that. Even a few years ago, ChatGPT, now everyone's using Muse. ~ ~ our friend ~ used Muse to sell a car. It's great. Actually that was really funny because we tried to do that ~ five years ago. How do we create an AI to sell a car? So yeah, so I think this ~ new interaction is gonna unlock a lot. ~ it's gonna unlock a lot of productivity. Now I'm not really an expert on the all of the AI things that are happening. So I think

John Ling: You know everything.

David Au-Yeung: I ~ not like I wouldn't consider myself like really good about knowledge about knowledgeable about ~ data centers and anything on the hardware or or the real estate side. but but I think there are challenges, right? There are definitely political challenges, you know environmental challenges to some of that. And you know we have to be thoughtful about it. ~ I do get quite scared ~ what it's gonna do to ~ the future of the next generation. But like all tools, if we people use it for good. They can do good. If people use it for bad, they'll do bad. It's just the the human nature of who that person is. So I think it just comes down to the person.

John Ling: Yeah, I think that the opportunity for us is that ~ right now it I feel we're at the beginning because not everyone use AI as they currently know how to use the internet, like know how to do the right searches or like no go to YouTube and find their answers and on how to ~ caulk a window or something. Right. I feel like we're at the beginning, and this is an opportunity for us to help. some of the mid-market owners who may not have the access to really help them get better or like no solve a problem. Right. We we've seen some really interesting cases in that area.

David Au-Yeung: Mm-hmm.

John Ling: Okay. Yeah. So maybe let's go into like no like a lot of owners, I when I talk to ~ different owners, they're in one or two camps, right? They either believe that AI can do everything, ~ but It's not they don't have the experience actually productionizing one. So it works 80% of the time and 20% doesn't work. And thus can we really run business on it? The second group is that they're so afraid of AI because they had one or two bad experiences and they don't want to do anything on AI anymore. Right. So owners are skeptical sc skeptical and they don't have the time to waste. ~ how does that actually look like based on what you see, the owners that we work with? ~ what's valuable

David Au-Yeung: Yeah, I yeah, I think

John Ling: for them. Yeah.

David Au-Yeung: I I would say ~ number one, if you own a company or you're one of the executives for a company, it's very important because this technology is not gonna go away. So I believe if ~ it's an important thing for you, you should spend time. To try. Right. Get an Anthropic license. Try. OpenAI, any of them. ~ don't get too fancy. I think in the beginning it's just, you know, learning. ~ maybe John, we can release a ~ like one on one for people. Like they can just like download all the skills, download everything, and just try it. Yeah, I think they have to try. I I I do feel if someone is worker is a is an employee they're working, I think that's where the I think that's where people get more afraid. Cause they're thinking, man, maybe AI is gonna replace me. So I think the perspective of an owner versus an employee, those are very different.

John Ling: Yeah, I I hear ya. ~ it's it's funny, my mom this morning was asking me like ~ like ~ her her s ~ her sister's husband was telling telling her that AI is going to take out all the jobs. It's like no very like doom-minded, right? And ~ and I said that, you know, it's funny that I am working with a freight third-party logistics company, right? And we were able to triple the department's revenue in two months. ~ interesting story. ~ we just basically used AI to help solve a lot of the repetitive human task that didn't really add value and let human they don't want to do it. Yeah. Yeah.

David Au-Yeung: And they don't want to do it too. They think about it. They actually didn't want to do it. And now they're so much happier because

John Ling: Yeah.

David Au-Yeung: ~ ~ for the CEO, if ~ ~ this thing tripled his revenue and you you essentially played the forward-deployed engineer into this engagement and you tripled their revenue, they did not add any staff.

John Ling: They actually added because of the performance of October, they actually hired two additional people because they see the opening. Yeah.

David Au-Yeung: they hire two, so they do more. They do more. But now they all the existing people are probably happier about their jobs too. Right.

John Ling: That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So that's always ~ hey, ~ of course there are ~ there are opportunities to reduce ~ staff count, but there are definitely opportunities to just grow the top line and that that actually creates more jobs. So yeah, like we're seeing ~ one right like live with one of the ~ the customers that we have and yeah, it's it's been really ~ interesting and enjoyable just watching how technology can better people's lives and better the performance of a business.

David Au-Yeung: Mm-hmm. That's right.

John Ling: If your team is buried in work that doesn't need a person, I'd like to hear about it. Start a conversation with me at CollectiveXP.io slash podcast. I read every one. Yeah. So ~ let's talk about like you know how we're using AI because I think that we briefly talked about it in another ~ ~ like an earlier episode. ~ tell like let's talk about how ~ ~ Jarvis has changed our lives and why Jarvis, why the name Jarvis. Yeah. Yeah.

David Au-Yeung: But before that, I want I want to I want to just point it out. ~ I ~ ~ just quickly searched online and ~ I wanted to know small and medium-sized businesses in Canada, how many, like what's the makeup of this? So Gemini is telling me that 99.7% of all employer businesses in Canada are small and medium-sized businesses. And private sector GDP. is from this, right? ~ ~ ~ if we have a if we have a productivity issue as a country, we need to be more productive. Right. With some of the recent changes, ~ you know, I think it's like the new government is focused on the right things. I feel that this is a great enabler for these businesses to, in your point, ~ generate more revenue, ~ help more customers, help more clients. so I think it's like a great tool. I I've always in my career have been thinking about how do I apply technology. So I'm not very deep into ~ research of technology, it's more like applied. ~ ~ ~ and that's what

John Ling: Yes.

David Au-Yeung: engineering is. Engineering is applied sciences.

John Ling: Applied sciences, yeah.

David Au-Yeung: Yeah.

John Ling: Yeah, no, I I a hundred percent agree. I think that it's it's a tool that ~ as Canadians we really need to focus on.

David Au-Yeung: Yeah, for sure. So you were talking about Jarvis?

John Ling: because we had another name and then you picked the name Jarvis, like let's rename

David Au-Yeung: Yeah, so ~ so ~ I guess ~ ~ just some background here. At Flipp I had around 150 people in my comp in in my department. ~ we had around 400. you know, people might be very familiar with quarterly goals, annual goals, OKRs, objectives and key results. So, you know, we would do that and we propagate it and and and you know teams would have their objectives. It's like a very standard way of running a business. Some companies may use EOS, so the entrepreneur operating system as well. There are very kinds, various kinds of this. And then I think one problem, one challenge is as a director, VP, CEO, C level, it's really hard to understand whether or not your ~ teams or your employees are aligned to the goals. And whether or not they're actually driving the right activities to hit your goals. And if they're not, you don't want to wait a week. Well, a week is very generous. You don't want to wait a month or a quarter to retroactively, ~ retrospectively, then tell them hey, you should have made some changes. And I think this is where AI is very interesting. So our company, you know, you and I and our partners, we're not very big. So we're just testing this out. And the reason why I call it Jarvis is ~ I love Iron Man. And it's just a very easy way for us to understand based on the name Jarvis what it's supposed to do. So ~ we wanted to build our own AI enabled context layer across our entire company, right? Across all of our objectives the key results, who owns it. Right. And my goal is is there a way that we can eliminate all reporting? Right. When people start the day, AI can assist them to tell them, hey, you know what, you have these goals. Maybe you should consider the following things to make yourself more effective. ~ you know, someone may be focused on having conversations and discovery with potential customers. AI should tell them, hey, you should increase that frequency. ~ another one is, you know, we do these engagements, such as the ~ the logistics one you mentioned. So at a high level, the system just better matched ~ demand and supply and then created the best UX for the operation staff to action. I mean, it to sum up, right? So it would be great if AI can go, hey, what other businesses have these characteristics so that we can go out and ~ talk to more of these type of companies so we can help them? Because it's not really just like ~ a logistics problem. It's just a general problem. And I think that's where AI can really assist. And ~ and over time, it has an ongoing context of what has happened in the past. Right. And I know a lot of people, they would use Claude and they'll just be on the chat and they'll upload their document, they'll be working in isolation. So I guess the question is like, hey, you're and I think that's step one. People need to work in in their kind of you know, console isolation. My question is like, if I do that. It would be great if I also have the ~ context and the minds of everyone that's around me with the right access, the right permission. So that's what we're build we're dog fooding this ourselves. Yeah.

John Ling: It's it's it's funny because like ~ w we we did exactly that. We started like you know, just doing that individually and then eventually realized that hey, it's actually a very important tool as a team to leverage. ~ and ~ again, like I guess because I was talking to my mom earlier this morning, so ~ I was telling her that a lot of the growth as an individual comes from the time you spend with yourself, right? you're retroactively you're retrospectively thinking about what did what you did right, what you did wrong. ~ and for me, ~ for the past year, I would say, ~ that's a role that AI kinda helped me do some of that. It's like s an accountability partner that tells me, hey, you should have done this. You said you're gonna do this, but you didn't, right? Why not? Right? Then tomorrow you better do this. Right. So a lot of

David Au-Yeung: Mm-hmm.

John Ling: those is really helpful for us to grow as people. So yeah, ~ I agree with you.

David Au-Yeung: Yeah, individually. But as also as a group, I want to now take what is ~ what you've learned about, for example, you're looking into how to help the general manager at a local dealership, 10 extra business. That insight is very valuable for the entire group of us. Right. And in in the past it was just ~ ~ you have to really think through and then you have to communicate and you're spending so much time communicating. So ~ just I don't know if listeners know, I came from a technical background, but when we were growing at Flipp, I was essentially chief people officer. so I really took a liking to HR. HR is a great indust ~ a great function and it's an enabler for businesses. ~ but then there's also HR that is more about ~ rules and regulations. or I don't know what what you call that word, ~ liability, compliance.

John Ling: Lines. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

David Au-Yeung: I looked at it as an enabler. So I see AI as like a huge ~ ~ enabler for HR to make their people more effective. Yeah. I I I have some crazy ideas. I I do I'm I would talking to a lot of people all the time. I would love just for AI to give me a call as I'm driving home and have a conversation with me and ask me questions about how the meetings went. And that should help drive the decisions for you and everybody else. Right. So why have to why do people need to type in their CRM anymore? Makes no sense. Yeah.

John Ling: That's exactly it. I think that's a learning that ~ a lot of the a lot of a lot of the business owners are thinking that AI is just a chat box that you ask questions and get some answers. When what we're realizing, at least at current stage of AI, it is a tool that enables any business owner to remove the frictions for the people. so that they can actually perform their jobs better than they could before. And that's what we're doing with the the local dealership that we're talking about. How do we remove those frictions so that they have the information, they have the tools, they have the ability to close the next sale. Right. Yeah.

David Au-Yeung: Yeah. Yeah, that that's a very interesting use case because ~ the salespeople are amazingly friendly people, they they love their local community, but they're not the they would not be the the world's best at gathering data, doing analysis. Right. And ~ and so our objective is when they come in on Monday, we already have primed have and our AI has analyzed. Here are the top ten to fifteen customers that you can talk to right away. based on what's in happened in the in the like the the car that they bought, context about those customers from the CRM to the promotions and ~ and what the OEMs are pushing in terms of new deals. I told you I would love to have this. Like I currently drive I currently lease a car for my daily car and I pay a certain amount. If someone called me and said, Dave, you can get into a new one, you can try these this new thing, has a longer warranty, has new features. And you pay roughly the same. I'm walking, ~ ~ I'm not walking, I'm driving to that dealership like today. Right. And most sales, the the most important part about sales, especially auto sales, is like getting people in the door is the most important thing. And then you learn a lot about what they actually need. Right. So yeah, so we're so we're very excited about this one. it's still very I would say alpha at this point.

John Ling: Yeah, yeah, it's alpha, yeah. But yeah, we're yeah, I I want I want to see what it does in three months, ~ just like what it does for the logistics company, right?

David Au-Yeung: man, I I let's give it two weeks, man. I think. Yeah, we gotta move fat ~ ~ ~ yeah, we can move much

John Ling: Wow, okay. Okay. Sounds good. Yeah.

David Au-Yeung: faster. I think ~ there's no excuse. We should all move much faster. Yeah.

John Ling: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. A lot. So ~ if you're an owner listening, ~ what what should they be taking away from today? Like what is the key lesson that you want ~ or key action that you want them to drive on the on the next Monday?

David Au-Yeung: ~ well that's a very ~ deep question. ~

John Ling: Yes.

David Au-Yeung: I would say From a technology perspective, like AI, ~ like try the tools. Try it, don't be afraid. ~ you know, especially if if that person is the CEO, the owner, they can use what's available just for themselves and keep it simple. ~ but I think the more important long term, the most important thing for the long term is to think about the culture that they're trying to build and how to enable the people. Right. Because ~ everything we do, whether it's AI, whether or not it is the mobile phone, the internet, all of that, as an owner for the company, you have a duty and obligation to provide livelihood for your ~ for your staff, for your employees. And like I know the person in the seat as an entrepreneur, not a lot us, there are not a lot of us out there. So it's hard for people to understand the pain that we sometimes have to go through. But that's an obligation and that's ~ ~ that's why you're an owner of a company. Right. So it is a culture, it is what you want to build in the future for your people and ~ use these tools to enable them.

John Ling: What if the owner does not have a very concrete or clear clarified set of ~ values? Cause I think that that's a one part. ~ as someone who came from a history of like corporate experience, it's the first place where I actually see because I remember like even back in university, ~ back at masters when we learn about like corporate culture. My thought was it's a bunch of soft, ~ totally illogical thing, but I saw it actually working. Right. That's like what so that's ~ the thing that I I was just very surprised and it's like something that I realized that it's so important for every business. So for someone who doesn't have that clarity or doesn't have that ~ value documented, what should they do to get started?

David Au-Yeung: Yeah, it's it it it is a a journey to get there. So I think ~ to have humility to be able to ask your your top performers why ~ your company is successful, what they enjoy about the company, ~ have you know the the have your top ~ employees tell you what they feel are their values. I think it I think this one you need to involve the team. I've seen many people have talked to them and they go, Hey Dave, ~ these are the values that ~ I want to have in my company and I'm gonna roll it out to my staff and I'm going to have you ask them if those are real. Do they see you doing that? And if you don't do that, do you tell them, ~ I made a mistake, these are our values? So I think it it has to come from the source of humility. to involve the right people and it's not involving all people, I would say, 'cause you still have to ~ you still want to model after your top performers. Right. So it is to talk to those and and also educate yourself, ~ insp be inspired. ~ there are many books out there that you can inspire get get inspiration from, ~ from reading. ~ you know, John, you know, I I love Patrick Lencioni.

John Ling: Okay.

David Au-Yeung: So Five Dysfunctions of a Team, and there's so many things that ~ there's so many books that ~ he released in the past. They're all top sellers. It's because it it just makes sense. If people are genuinely trying to do a great job and they genuinely want to work with great people, the books will make sense. So I think those are ~ ~ that that's probably one of the top books I always recommend people to read.

John Ling: Okay. One more thing. If people ~ if our ~ audience has listened to this and want to reach out to you, how should they reach out to you?

David Au-Yeung: I don't really check my LinkedIn.

John Ling: Okay.

David Au-Yeung: And I don't I don't have I don't have X. I don't have Twitter. ~

John Ling: Okay. So

David Au-Yeung: and my Instagram is very private. You know what?

John Ling: Okay.

David Au-Yeung: I think ~ maybe I should start a Twitter account. Maybe, maybe,

John Ling: Really? Okay. All right. Okay.

David Au-Yeung: or or yeah, like ~ connect with me on LinkedIn. I I you know what? I'm a tech person. I turned off notification ten years ago and I still haven't figured out how the heck to turn it back on. or maybe I just

John Ling: Yeah.

David Au-Yeung: like subconsciously don't want to turn it on. LinkedIn has a lot of ~ noise now. I think 75% of the stuff is written by AI. So

John Ling: Absolutely.

David Au-Yeung: I I don't ~ by the way, that's where I don't really enjoy AI. Last note, my daughter ~ she's 14. She loves art. So her and I I really enjoy these conversations because she's really challenging me on AI is evil. I think maybe it's a teenage thing. AI is evil across the Spec ~ there's no spectrum. It's like AI is just evil general. And I'm trying to explain to her. And and those conversations were really interesting. Right. I think humans,

John Ling: I think

David Au-Yeung: we we we thrive on our value is on taste and it is on ~ relationship and authenticity, right? I love art. I would never buy AI art. But you know what? We would pay a lot of money for the art behind the artists because of their story and why. They made that art ~ is ins in inspirational, right? So yeah.

John Ling: It's it's funny because ~ ~ as someone who's super into design and art I guess, ~ design is about making things work and art is about making people feel. Very different things. It doesn't make

David Au-Yeung: Yeah.

John Ling: sense for a machine to make you feel, right? So yeah, that's why AI art doesn't

David Au-Yeung: Well it would just make you feel it just make you feel it's like a replication. It will make you feel like it's it's fraud, to be honest. Right. So AI generated music, I don't like I love like playing piano, I love music as well too. I love fashion. I I just want originality in things and I want people to put an effort in stuff.

John Ling: Yeah. If ~ there there is one thing, ~ ~ ~ ~ a lot of the reason why we're able to do a podcast and ~ ~ ~ do it so quickly, is because we did leverage some AI music, let's say. Yeah. So

David Au-Yeung: Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. And and I think that those are tools, right? But then again, we're not trying to monetize the music. It it just does its job, right? Yeah.

John Ling: No, we're not. Yes. It's just something to show that hey, this is the beginning of the show. Anyways, thank you. Yeah.

David Au-Yeung: Yeah, it's like ~ yeah, when people yeah, when people buy art in the house because a real estate agent needs to do a showing, that art is just there as a placeholder and they probably got it from Walmart for cheap and it's printed

John Ling: Yeah. Yeah.

David Au-Yeung: in China.

John Ling: Yeah, that's not ex that yeah, that's that's really to serve a purpose. ~ this is why

David Au-Yeung: Yeah, so as a purpose.

John Ling: this wall so empty, 'cause I'm thinking about what to do here. Yeah.

David Au-Yeung: Well you should draw your own wall. You could you could do some drawing. Or get your daughter.

John Ling: okay. That's a lot of time. Yeah. Yeah. ~ no, no, no, not yet. Maybe another year or two of like, you know, some training, then maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much, David. ~ I think this has this has been really interesting. So we will see how people if people want to reach out to you, people can probably reach out through our website and then one of us will convey the message to you.

David Au-Yeung: Okay, I'll I'll fix my social media, but okay. Yeah, I I mean th this is just like our regular chat anyway, so it's it's great. Yeah.

John Ling: Cool. Okay, sounds good. Yes, yeah. All good. Three things to take from David one, try the tools yourself this week and keep it simple. Two, culture is what people see you do, not what's on the wall. Ask your best people what your values really are. Three, use AI to take the friction off your people so they can grow the top line. Now David doesn't check LinkedIn, so if you want to reach in, go to CollectiveXP.io slash podcast. And if this was helpful, Subscribe and tell us who we should be talking to next.