Speaker 1:

Welcome everybody to Building my Legacy podcast. I am delighted to have you with us and to have Brian Weaver with us. He is CEO of Torch AI, an artificial intelligence company. And my goodness, he’s done a lot in this area which is really fun to share with you. He has more than 20 years of experience leading mission-driven high growth technology focused companies. He helps leading organizations leverage artificial intelligence in a unique way via proprietary enterprise data management software solution. Today he supports companies like H&R Block with fraud detection, and mitigation in the US Department of Defense which has to be a challenge.

Speaker 1:

He has launched and acquired several companies all focused on technology enabled services and data connectivity. His companies serve nearly 1,300 clients and have been recognized as Small Business of the Year by the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce. So you have been well recognized for your work and you have also been recognized by Forbes Magazine and I’m sure other leading business magazines for your work. He received the Defense Innovation Award at DITAC in 2017. In May, Brian, you went on and you’ve given commencement addresses and you’ve talked around the world about what it is that you do. So I would like you to start, if you want to add anything to that, something that is important to you that you want the audience to know, please do so and then we’ll get started.

Brian Weaver:

First of all, thanks for having me on. It’s fun to chat with you a couple of minutes beforehand as well, but I don’t know, I’m intrigued and I’m hoping to learn something about myself today, through the lens of building my legacy, obviously the topic of your show. I’m not one that normally thinks in those terms, but I think, it’s interesting to maybe take a moment and look back at the past, and it’ll be fun to spend some time with you today for sure.

Speaker 1:

So if you could start with, where did your journey begin and how did you enter this? You were talking a little bit about the NASCAR and what you did with that business and what you developed there. Your background is largely out of marketing and then into mathematical models and AI. So if you could share that please.

Brian Weaver:

Yeah, I mean, I think as a kid, I am a creative being. I’ve always been somebody that was one very driven. My wife, we’ll be sitting in our backyard and I enjoy nature and I won’t be able to sit still for more than a couple of minutes before I’d get up and tinker with something or clip some hedge or dip at a flower or something like that. I can’t sit still very long. But I’ve always been a driven person, very creative and disciplined. My father was an army intelligence officer and I grew up in a household where that discipline, and I mean that in a good way, by the way. A healthy amount of discipline and good habits were really just part of the foundation.

Brian Weaver:

And because I had that, when I got into the working world, it didn’t take me very long, just about five years to figure out that I didn’t want to work for a company. At my very first job, I very quickly became the top sales executive at the company, a very large company. And actually that was the company where I wrote my first software program, and oddly enough, and this is going to sound totally gratuitous and I don’t mean it this way, but my sales performance was extraordinary and the company did not have infrastructure to support the number of sales that I had made. So I had to write my own software program to manage the workload.

Brian Weaver:

And so that was my first foray into that. And it was a time management thing for me and it ended up being adopted by a group of folks there inside the company and then evolved from there. But I always was curious and technology was always part of everything I did. The next company that I worked for, I actually got reprimanded for doing a program for NASCAR where I invented a strategy to measure fan behaviors and programmatically deliver content to them to improve the chance that they might sign back up again for season tickets. So it was just a really simple ticket retention marketing campaign really on the surface, but underneath the surface of that was some complicated math and some content and feature labeling and all this other stuff that is table stakes in the machine learning world.

Brian Weaver:

But back then I was giving away the technology to earn services dollars, if you will. And really the only thing in my career that’s any different from when I was 24 years old is that I don’t give the technology away now for something else. I’m actually monetizing the intellectual property and the software that’s been developed, and really that’s the world, right? It’s not just me and being clever. It’s the way the world’s moved and software is everything.

Brian Weaver:

So I’d say that that was always part of it, but I started my first company, like I said, my last employer reprimanded me, and that was the forcing function where I decided to step off the train and just said, “You know what, I’m going to do this differently. I’m going to do it on my own, and I’m going to see what that’s like.” And I have been on my own as an entrepreneur or self-made from the time I was 25 years old. So it’s been interesting and I’ve had ups and downs and lots and lots of war wounds and I’ve got some wisdom because I’ve made so many mistakes in my life. But again, I would characterize what I do today as being very, very similar to what I’ve done my whole career, not a one trick pony, but maybe just two or three.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So you talk about wisdom. What are some of the biggest lesson or lessons that you’ve learned as you’ve been on this journey?

Brian Weaver:

Yeah, I mean, again, I’m trying to think of for you and your listeners, from the point of view of building a legacy. I think probably what’s germane is the relationships that you have, and maybe the wisdom I have is that early on in my career, if I look at the 20 plus years in the saddle, the first half of the career was being that hero persona where I through violent action and force of will, could do almost anything. I could sell, I could deliver, I could manage, play the executive role and I didn’t need, especially when you’re small, I think you can get away with it if you’re under anything under about $20 million.

Brian Weaver:

And the cosmos in terms of revenue depends on what customer type it is and all that. But I think that’s about the number. A small business, personalities are the celebrity in the ecosystem, drives that thing. And the bigger you get and actually the more mature you get, you realize that it’s not just about the money, but it’s about a way of life and a way of making sure that what you’re doing creates a bit of a positive flywheel but you need others. So the wisdom, probably the biggest lesson is just being self-aware, what am I truly good at. As an entrepreneur and a sole proprietor for a period of time in the early years, you have to learn to do everything. Wipe the coffee maker down, be a CFO, be a CEO, be a salesperson, be a graphic designer.

Brian Weaver:

I mean you have to learn all these lessons which I’m not good at them all. And so I think the first lesson is, or first piece of advice is be self-aware. And the second piece of advice would be aware of others. I think the most profound gift that I’ve been given in the last, say decade, is becoming more and more aware of the unique value and talent that others around me have. And it’s not like mine, it doesn’t need to be, but we need each other to be successful. And if you can figure that part of it out and there’s an equation there and I think there’s a mathematical equation to it. And if you can actually really apply some energy to understand your world through that lens, magic will happen. I really do. I think those are the two big things that I think would be pertinent to your audience for sure.

Speaker 1:

So I’m curious, what is the mathematical part that would apply to that?

Brian Weaver:

So I won’t take total credit, but I’ve got some concepts that I have learned over the years that totally influenced and bootlegged from others. But I think if you think about you as a being, you have some level of risk tolerance, creativity, you have some level of a desire to start work on or complete a task is a normal emo things. You have some desire to collect information, and then maybe the fourth element would be physically how do your ideas or decisions manifest themselves.

Brian Weaver:

So we use, for example, in our company there’s lady in Arizona that developed an assessment called the Kolbe Assessment, K-O-L-B-E. So in that rubric you’ve got a quick start, an implementer, a fact finder and a follow through. So those are the four categories. I do a lot of work with Deloitte Consulting. They have a very similar, almost identical plan. They changed some of their labels on the personas to Pioneer, Defender, things like that. But it’s fundamentally the same. There’s these four facets. And it’s not, by the way, it’s not the Myers-Briggs, it’s not your skillset or aptitude, this is more like your emo. How do you make a decision? And I am off the charts in the Kolbe Assessment and off the charts Quick Start person. Typical entrepreneur, maybe not typical, prototypical. I got a lot of energy. I’m highly creative and I need the creative outlet. I do not have a high need to complete a project. I’m okay if something’s not working quite right, I’ll drop it.

Brian Weaver:

I can move on. A lot of people can’t. They have to finish it, and by the way, there’s no wrong answer there. Sometimes people go out of business and become bankrupt because they hold on too long. Sometimes people don’t hold on long enough to see it through and have some success. The one thing about me that I think is good is I’m stubborn. I mean, I’m one of the most stubborn people you’ll meet, even though I don’t need to finish something. If I believe in it, I will see it through no matter what. On the fact finder side, I’m the person that’s wired to do just enough fact-finding to justify my view, which is silly and funny. And then I actually love to get my hands dirty. I don’t mind waiting in and engaging.

Brian Weaver:

But the reality is, if you’re trying to do something significant, especially in the IT space, we’ve got multiple types of personalities, a big engineering culture where things and cycles move so fast. Most of the development methodologies around agile, the notion that you’re going to continually improve on a daily basis or at worst a two week basis. And so because of that, the coordination between all those types of personalities becomes very pointed. So again, I think it’s that formula how, for example, my wife, very high fact finder, which compliments a very high quick start. So that’s that mathematic formula that I think you’d want to apply to how do you build a team? And so again, some of that wisdom and maturity comes from being aware of myself, aware of others and using tools. There’s plenty of other ones too, but just using a tool like that, not robotically but using it as a backdrop to decisions on how to make things work for the betterment of the greater good.

Speaker 1:

That applies to so much, whether you’re into legacy building and trying to look at what’s next, you’ve got to have to work with people at some point, right?

Brian Weaver:

Absolutely. Well, you hope so. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

All of life involves some people. So it’s pulling on those resources is huge. AI, so much conversation about AI and what is coming, what’s happened. Where do you see things going with AI and where will be some of the biggest challenges?

Brian Weaver:

Yeah. A good friend of mine, Senator Jerry Moran just introduced Privacy Act. Senator from Kansas, and he did something pretty profound and there’s some really interesting, and I don’t want to get into the actual concept of the legislation. But I think privacy is probably number one concern and influential topic in this space. I mean it all begins and ends with data, right? How you exercise and enrich or transform that data, that’s a separate topic. But fundamentally I think privacy is the most sensitive and important topic that can happen. You certainly see things like GDPR in Europe. California’s got some interesting legislation that they have been working on. But I do suspect that, and again, kudos to Senator Moran. I do suspect that there’s going to be some really interesting debate around privacy.

Brian Weaver:

Last year, the year before we opened up the flood gates a little bit with internet service providers and their ability to sniff data packets that go through their pipes. And that’s a good thing in some ways, it’s good for business for sure. But it also speaks to a really interesting ethical debate around what are you giving up and what are you okay giving up with regard to privacy? So I think data privacy is probably the biggest issue. And when you get into AI, and maybe that’s the best way, answering that question first probably is the right approach. So AI is… A lot of people say they do AI stuff, most of them don’t. The industry is wonky, it’s anybody with a computer program would call it AI today, and that’s just not accurate.

Brian Weaver:

The reality is the systems need to learn and that’s a big differentiator and actual deep learning application, is frankly very rarely implemented at an enterprise. It’s hard to do. And it’s for all those reasons that we talked about before the show. The reality is if I’ve got to make a critical decision, which is what Torch AI focuses on today. Literally that’s the only thing we do is critical decisioning frameworks. We’ve got large dollars at stake where you’re putting lives at stake and you cannot fail and it requires you to have a bit of an interesting approach. But most of the companies in the space, or, enterprises that wish to deploy the notion of machine learning in their enterprise, they know it, it holds some promise. But those deployments fail because they don’t scale.

Brian Weaver:

So I think we’re still, even though the technology itself is pretty advanced, I think as an organism, we’re just getting started. Certainly AI’s on your phone, it’s ubiquitous, that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about actually in enterprise scaling that out, it’s still is a tough thing. We still have very human centric systems.

Speaker 1:

When you say scaling it out, what does that really mean for you?

Brian Weaver:

Yeah, I mean, if you think about a large enterprise, there are legacy systems, there’s people, there’s personalities, you have executives, different levels of education, different levels of technology, wisdom, digital maturity. And so in an organization, I don’t care which organization it is, but in any organization, and this is why by the way, firms like McKinsey, Deloitte, do so well with consulting, right? In any organization, you have so much going on that corrupts the organization’s ability to deploy an advanced technology that it’s almost impossible to do it.

Brian Weaver:

So even if you’re lucky enough to sell it, the organization’s probably going to fail deploying the software, or the technology concept. That’s why these days the barrier to entry or barrier for adoption for an enterprise is as low because most companies are willing to do pilots. You don’t have to wait in like an Oracle or SAP used to do and say, “Hey, you got to buy our big enterprise system, take it or leave it.” That’s not how they started. But certainly, later that’s the delivery model.

Brian Weaver:

These days, companies need to make decisions at department level. They’re not making or deploying these technologies at an organizational level. It’s too complicated. If you do it from IT down, it never works. What you need is the decision making and the problem solving be happening at the lowest level. And because of that, it actually makes scaling a solution across an organization very difficult. If I had to deploy a particular technology and I had to go through a normal command and control top-down architecture in a company, it’s hard, it’s expensive, there’s a lot of personalities, there’s political issues inside the organization. So I mean forget the tech and even the promise of the tech, it’s just hard to do.

Brian Weaver:

So I think the notion that most companies are embracing today is solving these problems at the department level. And there’s a slogan that’s a bit cliche these days, but even in Silicon Valley, the land and expand concept where I just need the faucet in a department and once we get in the company, we’ll work really hard to expand into the company. And I think that’s a good strategy. It actually it’s more economical for the company buying the technology and it’s a much better use of capital for the software company or the technology company, as they look to onboard customers. But that’s what complicates it. I mean it’s not just the technology. This is… Remember, all the companies run on top of data and infrastructures. So it’s an interesting time.

Speaker 1:

So critical decisions Brian are, that’s going to be huge as we move forward. I think coming out of what’s happening right now. You look at the modeling that we’re doing with the Coronavirus that those are critical decisions, right? That are in place. But I think just dealing with the economy, we’re going to start seeing much more use of critical decision making, partly because we may not have some businesses surviving, we may look at business differently coming out of this, what do you think? What do you think is going to be next?

Brian Weaver:

Yeah, I mean I think there’s probably two things in there that would be really interesting things to think about. One would be, what is the state of trust? I pay attention to that in a big way, right? There’s lots of things. I trust in the monetary value of the US dollar. And interestingly, there is this gap in the notion of trust, and it’s slowly widening. It’s not gaping yet, but there’s been multiple studies that have come out in the last couple of years that would suggest, and I think everybody would just generally agree that we struggle to trust the system, our political constituents, your employer, all this stuff because the world’s just moving differently. And on top of that, you have the availability of data.

Brian Weaver:

I mean, you have every piece of data at your fingertips that you could ever possibly want. And it allows people to research and validate whatever their thesis is. So that’s an interesting phenomenon. I actually think that though we’re in a period of incredible pain and I, as somebody that runs businesses and employees, lots of, lots of people, I take that responsibility very seriously to make sure that I do everything I cam, to improve their opportunity to put food on their own table. But I really have to say that I believe that there’s going to be this period of innovation that’s… Coming out of this, we will go through a period of ridiculous innovation in this country.

Brian Weaver:

Some people would call it a bit of a reset. I’m not sure that I totally agree with that, but I do believe that when you tighten the belt, it does something interesting to the system, whether you’re working out, I raced Ironman competitively for a long time, I’ve made decisions, bad decisions, running businesses and had financial damage and all this other stuff and I’ve lived through that. But that stress and recovery is what makes you stronger. And so if I sit back and just think about what everybody’s going through, yeah right now in the moment it’s very difficult. I know people that are financially struggling already, and it’s a scary time and I take that very, very seriously and we’re doing everything we can do to help them. But at the same time when you look back and you just pick your head up a little bit, things will evolve, things will get better.

Brian Weaver:

And it’s that the way you get stronger is to go through stressful situations and recover from them. That’s just the reality. That’s how the human body works. That’s how psychology works. That’s how your emotional state works. It just is. So I’m actually very encouraged why certain things that I see, I am very encouraged by the people and the attitudes and emotions in my companies. I’ve been inspired by it frankly over the last eight days, it’s been amazing. But I really have a lot of faith and positive thinking around where we’re going to come out at the end of the day.

Speaker 1:

It’s interesting because I think, I was just speaking with a person who does a lot of work with businesses, and one of his comments was, it more in the M&A field, and one of his comments was, money will be tight. And so the money to acquire a business may not be as readily available. So one of the issues I think we’re going to have to think through is how are we going to leverage one another? How do we work with it? Again, how do we perhaps begin to form alliances, connections amongst businesses so that we can use trust. So we’re going to have to choose companies with whom we have some basic trust, or that we can establish a baseline of that, right? But then use that to leverage each other because that is possible doable. And it may actually propel us further faster than if we had looser money.

Brian Weaver:

Yeah, I mean I think there’s an economic flywheel and we’re in a global economy and there’s going to be a long tail on some of, especially when you think about countries whose entire economy is propped up by service, not necessarily hospitality, but you’ve got customers, certainly entire countries that provide customer service to the United States, and you’ve got an entire countries that are creating goods that where they are primary importer is United States. And so, those countries are going to be very heavily effected. There’s going to be a long tail on some of that. There’s going to be a lot of innovation. If you think about the United States in general, I mean, since Genesis of this country, we are probably the most innovative, the most technologically advanced. I mean, we’re only 300 million people, compared to say China or India. Granted, I agree with a lot of folks that some of the work ethic in some of the other countries might generally be better, but there’s no argument about some of the innovation that occurs in the United States is just profound and extraordinary.

Brian Weaver:

But I think if you go back to your original question, maybe that was the sentiment, the practical approach is I think the United States, we have what I would consider a strong network already, that we are highly connected, we’re not highly fragmented, we’ve got a pretty diverse economic base. And so because of that, I would say the prognosis is good. I think of a city like Kansas City is interesting because you have IoT with companies like Garmin, you have mobility with companies like Sprint. Obviously they’re merging.

Brian Weaver:

You’ve got a big workflow and medical records companies like Sonar, you got big financial companies like American Century and DST, but wrapped around that whole broad swath of economic diversity, you’ve got agriculture, and it creates a bit of this insulating factor. And so I think not only do you have to consider how might companies survive this compression and coming out of it, but you have to look back and look at the ecosystem of the United States as well. And look how the industries work with each other, not just the companies that the band together to sell to each other and create more economic value, but just look at how those sectors interface, and there’s a lot of network behaviors that occur in the United States that I think are pretty interesting.

Brian Weaver:

And so there’s little pockets. The service industry is going to be especially hard hit, but there’s a lot of other industries that are going to pop up that are going to be great. I mean, I’m worried about real estate. I’m worried about small sole proprietor services businesses. I mean, that’s most of our economy, but the good news there is they’re not capital intensive and there’ll be able to get back on their feet quickly. And I do believe, very strongly in this administration and Congress and their ability to put a stimulus package on the table that’ll provide emergency working capital to these businesses. I have faith in that, and I think if when you look back on the history of our country and not only from a entrepreneurs or business or commercial perspective, but the government, we’ve done pretty good. We’ve made good decisions there. So again, I’m not foolish. I’m not a Pollyanna about it, it’s hard, but I think at least we have the key foundational components to make sure that we succeed.

Speaker 1:

Brian our time goes very, very quickly here. I have one final question for you. It goes too fast. One final question for you, and that is, you spoke about networks and how we’re forming networks. What are some of the important things you need to think about if you want to network with somebody, what characteristics does that network partner need to have?

Brian Weaver:

Yeah, that’s interesting. I think for me first I think probably, maybe some of your listeners would like some advice on how to engage others. I think the first thing you’ve got to think is, how can I contribute value to the other person? There’s a great man that I am very close with, a guy named Fred Studer in San Francisco, and every time I interface with Fred Studer, he gives me energy. He was an executive at Microsoft, an executive at Oracle. Now he’s an executive at a great company called Tipco. And every interaction with him, even if he’s in a bad mood, he’s giving me energy, makes me feel good about me. So I think superficially that’s something that you should consider, right? How are you giving energy back to those around you? And then two, how are you giving them some value? The relationship is empty unless there’s an exchange of real value and it’s important that you think about how can you provide an impact as quickly as possible.

Brian Weaver:

Sometimes that’s just thinking. I’m a creative being, so that comes easier to me, but some others have great skills like research. My wife or some of the folks at my engineering software engineering company, they’re great at fact-finding and can dig up some research that might be relevant to somebody’s situation. So again, it would be, how can you give energy back? And number two, what value can you give to that person? And then on my side, I get approached all the time and I’m an introvert, so I’m not a natural networker. I love to engage and solve problems, but I’m not sales guy. But certainly I would say that’s part of my profession. When I evaluate relationships inbound, I really am trying to get to the person’s philosophy. How do they think of life? If they’re just trying to make their quarterly number, I have no interest in that.

Brian Weaver:

I think of, again, maybe this is a good final question because this speaks to legacy. Your legacy sure as hell better not be that I made my quarterly number, or I beat last year’s number. That better not be your legacy. And those are the people that are complete turnoff to me. I’ve never thought about life that way. And I think it’s unfortunate, and some people are, I mean it’s okay. But I think the point… If somebody listening to this podcast, maybe the whole point is, think about your life differently and can you live it with purpose, and if their purpose is aligned with mine or they have a purpose that’s interesting to me, then I find myself giving to them very quickly and a lot.

Speaker 1:

And I think that’s so important because I think this will be one of the discussions we’re going to have much more of as a society moving forward as businesses, and it will frame a lot. So I appreciate those insights.

Brian Weaver:

No, it’s fun to talk to you today.

Speaker 1:

Brian, thank you so much for your time and I look forward to hearing more about what you’re doing. I think that we’ve got so much more movement that’s coming in this whole area. Critical decision making is going to be become more and more important I think as we choose what kinds of things we’re going to get involved in. And so thank you. Thank you so much.

Brian Weaver:

No, my pleasure. Thanks for having me today. I had some fun.

Brian Weaver:

Thank you.