AI Demo vs. Production: What Enterprise Leaders Get Wrong | Adam Henderson

Ali Merchant 00:00 Hello everyone and welcome to the Enterprise AI podcast by Orvera AI, where we speak with business leaders and operators about how AI, technology, and smarter workflows are shaping the future of enterprise service delivery. I am Ali Merchant, CEO of Orvera AI, and today I am joined by Adam Henderson, CEO of Equity Consulting Solutions. Adam brings extensive experience in executive leadership. and service operations, with a focus on helping federal agencies and prime contractors deliver mission-driven solutions. We will explore his perspective on leadership, innovation, and the opportunities for AI to improve how organizations deliver services. Adam, thank you for joining me. And to get us started, if you could share your professional journey and a little bit about your role at Activity Consulting Solutions and your past experiences, that would be really helpful.

Adam Henderson 00:56 Okay, absolutely, Ali Pleasure to be here. entered the Marine Corps at the ripe age of 17. decided that I'm not very good at being told what to do. So I decided to become an entrepreneur. the journey is a little bit more convoluted than that as I started with a publicly traded company in Des Moines, Iowa, and transferred to Green Bay, Wisconsin. So that company was primarily situated To be content management. Ultimately, uh all the way from mortgage companies to healthcare to trucking companies. Anyone that had massive amounts of papers to digest and put into their electronic content management system was our key goal. I did that for about a decade before it dawned on me that, hey, maybe, you know, I'm 30 years old, I recognize that I've got a pretty high-level role and a very large organization. then kind of the entrepreneurial spirit caught me, if you will, and said, hey, you know, and the reality, Ali is why am I doing all of this for you? I could be doing it for myself. because quite frankly, you know, when have the knowledge base, when you have the relationships, and most importantly the passion, there's really very few roadblocks that can get in between success. because, you know, we were just talking before we started the podcast in relation to, you know, how hard, you know, we all work growing our companies and being intimately familiar with you folks. You work like I work. and and that's how you grow like you grow and you grow like I grow no days off, if you will. And and given I was thirty years old, that was highly acceptable. I would leave on Monday and come back in February. And that's just how life was. With that said, I was able to successfully exit that business and retire at been a few years now, so 48 years old, I retired and decided that maybe, just maybe, I would enjoy retirement and And I did for a little bit. my CPA, my Fine X folks, everybody said, hey, this isn't gonna last. and and we kind of chuckled because I legitimately thought, yeah, hey, you guys are wrong, this is gonna last. Well, really what happened to me is I was given the opportunity to look into the federal workspace in GovCon. So basically in government contracting, they're set aside money for people like me. I may Mentioned that I was in the Marine Corps for four years. I lost the hearing in my left ear. So I'm deaf in one ear. So I'm I'm currently a service disabled veteran. With that designation, I was able to launch acuity consulting solutions. and since then I'm in the acquisition phase. as you know, Ali, there's a couple ways you can go about things. First one is organic growth, and that's 70, 80 hour weeks. If you're lucky. The second one is to buy highly successful companies with owners that have motivations to leave the business, not necessarily because it's failing, but because they've hit retirement age. Or I've actually noticed that a lot of people have hit their financial goals. and so they're no longer interested in sitting in that seat. So that's a seat I'm more than willing to take. given my age, I still haven't hit the 60-year mark. so I've probably got a a good decade in me of running hard. So, with that said, what we specialize at acuity consulting solutions is in help desk and IT solutions specifically for federal agencies, all the way from veteran affairs to the Department of War and every Everything in between. currently I started this company in March. And I believe by the end of 27 with our current pipeline, we'll just be north of 7 million in total revenue in about a year's time. So with that said, I'm excited about the propensity of getting into the business. Right now, it's very good. Anybody who's following US politics know it's pretty messy. the the standard guard is no longer the standard guard and the way people operated before the second Trump administration is a lot different than how they operate after the second Trump administration. I'm not here to debate if that's good or it's bad, but I am here to say that for somebody in the government contracting a business, it's really good because I think a lot of things have been streamlined. And secondarily, I think the impetus they've put on service disabled veterans is appropriate. So with the set aside money allotted for people. that are dedicated to the cause, I believe it's going to be a really good deal for a long time. a lot of the statutory things, economic things are pointing in favor of people who are willing to stay in the fight.

Ali Merchant 05:31 appreciate that background. And knowing you for such a long time, I doubt you are going to earlier, you know, you were mentioning that, you know, you will reduce the speed. I doubt that is going to happen. Once I guess you get into because see you were just telling that like maybe five minutes apart and five minutes apart you are telling that this year you will already cross seven million. So I I

Adam Henderson 05:53 L.

Ali Merchant 05:53 knew knowing you that you know you're just going to grow it very, very quickly.

Adam Henderson 05:58 Yeah, life in the fast

Ali Merchant 05:59 Uh

Adam Henderson 05:59 lane, Ollie. Life in the fast lane.

Ali Merchant 06:02 Yeah, yeah. And you know, so and but that being said, you know, it's I think it's a great time

Adam Henderson 06:05 Yeah.

Ali Merchant 06:07 to launch a company as well, given, you know, AI is coming in, there are so many changes, people are looking for help. So I think, you know, it's a great moment to

Adam Henderson 06:16 Well.

Ali Merchant 06:16 do something new. So that being

Adam Henderson 06:18 Right.

Ali Merchant 06:18 said

Adam Henderson 06:19 Ali, I would like to just comment on that AI component because just like you, that's what's changed most dramatically in really the last 36 months. You know, your typical user on Chat GPT or Claude is using it like a Google. You know, they're not integrating it with apps. They're not using it for in-depth research. And I can tell you, for me, quite the opposite. I still use Google to find the best pizza. place in Green Bay. But, I integrate it with my SharePoint. So because of the sensitive nature of my business in dealing with CIU, we have to be very careful of what we integrate and how we integrate it. And there are specific AI tools out there that seamlessly seamlessly integrate with Outlook, SharePoint, Teams, you know, the whole Microsoft or G Suite. It really doesn't matter if you're a Google guy or a Microsoft guy, AWS or Azure, oh you know, those tools connect, and I can give you some real life examples in terms of just analyzing price points. So I can link it to say, the URL Sam.gov, which is the predominant bid resource for the government, and I can have it troll through there with what's called an AICE code, my specific skill set, and it will mine for me the opportunity. opportunities that are most important to me. So what I just said to you, instead of using two BD guys, one guy to dig up the opportunity, another guy to chase it, I can really have a really sweetheart. Very customized, very clean utility that pumps out the proposals that only I'm interested in every single day at 7 a.m. That's something I could not have done, say just a mere three years ago. secondarily, from a productivity standpoint, you can obviously see the benefits of putting in massive amounts of data. In the old company where we had hundreds of people across 23 states, just using it for a productivity tool so that we can upload raw files from each individual operation and let it give us the output in any fashion that we want. I would say it's the old access database query on steroids times 10, because it's so efficient. the enterprise versions of these utilities, these publicly available utilities, are still relatively economical. The tokens are really for you know an executive management team of say five people. I don't know that you can run it out of tokens on the enterprise level. So you know, that's really how we've been using it. And we're just, I gotta be honest, we're tip of the iceberg. You know, we're still doing probably more advanced level than most. People because we're always, you and I were always tech guys, that was our forte. but on the same token, I I firmly believe that this year, next time, when I come back on your podcast, I'll be telling you a whole new litany of ways that we've been able to adopt and utilize AI real time in an effective manner. There's things that have come up in the past in my career, and I'm just kind of spitballing off the top of my head that we said, this is going to be life-changing, and it really didn't amount to the spend. This is completely different. This really is life-changing. and quite frankly, helps us to more efficiently and effectively run our businesses.

Ali Merchant 09:40 To that thought, I haven't seen as many, overall, obviously, you have a very extensive experience, so not that much experience. But in my two decades, I have seen so many technologies come in. One, and each time the ecosystem would buzz that this is going to change everything, and things are going to get upside down. And then comes the part where we go to vendors and partners to understand okay, how can we use them? Right. And I think your your extensive experience and I've seen the scale of operations that you have, run the first time you show me showed me your warehouse, I was like, it how is this even possible, this size. So and s hence what I'm trying to say is that I know you have this so many things that you have done, right? From your extensive experience, tell me this: whenever a new technology comes in, you go to find a vendor, a partner, whatever you like to call them. Especially now it is becoming very easier that every demo looks very impressive. how would you choose a partner? How would you choose a vendor to deploy a technology? Or for the matter of fact, you know, how you would choose. This will give the audience a very good, you know, actionable practical insight that you know how they can choose vendors and partners.

Adam Henderson 10:52 Right. Well, Ali I think the first one is just looking at the leaders, who's out there. That is really making a splash. So if I'm making a recommendation for an individual company, if if you're leading the pack, you've got to reinvent the wheel, right? But if you're following the pack, which I think the vast majority of people are, there's only one or two true leaders in that industry, and everybody else is playing catch up, find out what they're doing. that's step number one to me. secondarily, I think the trade publications, I think they do a very good job. So for For instance, in the GovCon space, there's an organization called Orange Slices. And uh funny name, but a just a very practical and real way to draw on intelligence of what's actually working in the field. So, Ali, you made a point in relation to people analyzing a vendor demo, and everything looks great in the demo, and then in practical purpose, uh I equate it to communism. Communism actually looks pretty good on. Paper, but in practical application, it just does not work. It isn't effective unless it's like an Amish community in a really small setting. And I feel that same presence or that same essence rather with vendor demos because by God, I can make it sharp and snappy, but I consistently ask for references on any software that we're going to to put out there. And I'm specifically asking the vendor. For a list for me to choose from. Don't henpick the three you want me to talk to that are gonna, you know, firmly plant their lips on your butt. Give me a list of, say, 20 and let me henpick so nobody really knows what I'm calling, what questions I'm gonna ask, that kind. And I found that probably to be a very effective method to see how really the internal workings go. Now, I want to branch that into two different categories. The first one being conversation. Commodity based softwares, whether it be AI, payroll systems, whatever you have. there's a fair amount of reviews and evidence for those legacy programs that are out there that without making a phone call one, you can get an idea are these guys going to be good or going to be bad? And hence lies the problem, Ali All of this is new. You know, there's not a clear cut leader. In terms of what your organization may be used, because your needs are going to be vastly different from mine. Now, the consistencies are. You still have a PL, you still have financials, you still have a payroll, you still have, executive functions that happen whether you run a car wash or an advanced AI company. And those things I think can easily tuck in to a lot of the commercial AI utilities like Claude. And and I gotta be honest, my preference for business is Claude. My preference for personal is ChatGPT. so in vetting out what I wanted to attach. To my company from an AI solution, the current company, is just by my use. I've got a low level of confidence in Chat GPT giving me you know, 0.3 second answer in an advanced business concept. I don't mind waiting 12 minutes for Claude to give me the right answer after it's dug and dug and dug. And especially with prompting. You know, if you understand how to use the AI and how to prompt. Prompt it, you obviously get a lot more clear and correct answer just by simply using prompts. The last point that I would make on this vetting process is the end customer service. And that's why I wanted to differentiate between the commodity based ones. If I'm going with an ADP or a payloadity, customer service is okay. A help desk is okay, right? But on these leading edge technologies where I might be days into a project and have a major failure, I need to contact somebody because I don't want to lose all of the work in the background or have to recreate it. And that right now on the ACE AI side has been a challenge. What maybe differentiate you and I, Ali, from maybe somebody else in the group, our businesses have the the in our DNA as customer service. So we simply cannot tolerate when somebody fails to meet what the standard we hold ourselves to. we were in business together for a decade, and you know, I'll say to you, you didn't let me down, and I hope I didn't let you down, because we take it seriously because the customer customer service component of what we're trying to accomplish is just as important as the service because when people are in a pickle they need a partner. in the case of the AI that I'm seeing enterprise usage, that is a little bit lacking. Now the great thing is the AI is very good. So I haven't found myself in a position to need the customer service on the backside, but for that particular need, it was by user use versus somebody's word. you know, me just ultimately playing around and using concurrent services with similar or same questions. and then analyzing the output myself and then making the decision what most closely aligns to what I believe to be closest to the truth.

Ali Merchant 16:12 I think you know, it's such a practical Answer. I always say, someone recently asked me, a new guy within the office, that what sort of books should I read? And I told

Adam Henderson 16:22 Mm.

Ali Merchant 16:23 him that you know what? Read people who have actually done it rather than who say how it should be done. Because people who have done

Adam Henderson 16:29 Right. Right.

Ali Merchant 16:30 it will have real actionable insights and points for you. This was such a great, you know, insight on that part. That being said, you know, the second part, once you have decided upon a partner is where should a leader within an enterprise start, whether it's AI or any new technology, how would you approach any new technology that okay this is where I start?

Adam Henderson 16:53 I I I I'll just tell you how I do it, Ali. So I don't know, I don't know how good of advice this is for a listener, but I can tell you what I do is you know, I always start I always start with an AI search. So if I'm looking for something, I want it to parse for me what the top offerings are. Secondarily, is I want to see an emerging company that's making waves. Number one, if you're in a more mature company and you simply don't have the time to deal with the fledging company, even though they may, you know, appearingly be very good, most of the time you're gonna go with a proven leader. So when you've got 800 employees across 23 states, I'm not gonna go with mom and pop's payroll shop. I'm gonna pick an ADP, a pay lossy at Kronos. But if in the event I've got the time and the energy, there are some really good companies. That have been born of this AI age that you can get a significant cost advantage of. so just the economies of running the program, if that's important to you, and especially in a startup, you don't need ADP or pay lossy, man. You can use mom and pop's, payroll shop and have an effective payroll solution for a quarter of the cost. Defining, and I should back up a little bit, defining with my team what's important. So for instance, we've been picking on payroll softwares because they're quite abundant. You know, I'm gonna get with HR and specifically the payroll specialist and say, where are your pain points? What are you looking for help? Can we dollarize the time you're spending on this? Can we dollarize, you know, morale that's being lost because of a specific problem? And then we have a definitive list of We know what we're looking for. And that's what I would input into an AI agent to say, these are my specific problems, which systems most adequately address the problems that I'm really having, not the fictitious ones, but the actual ones that I'm talking to the person that's having the problems, or even through employee surveys to say, hey, what are you guys experiencing? And especially in this transparent age, Ali, when you started, you you probably got a paper-paycheck. That had all the information on the top half of the pay on the bottom, right? everybody did. Now you approve your own paycheck on the phone a couple days before payroll to make sure everything's adequate. That's the expectation of people today. Now, if I flip the script and talk about finance, you know, we moved over to Business Central at Microsoft from QuickBooks Enterprise. And we use QuickBooks Enterprise because we thought it was low cost. We thought it met a lot of the metrics that we needed. But what we learned just through discovery and and how we went about it was just user forums. Our CFO, ran into a user forum or forum of other CFOs, very similar to this podcast. And he listened and said, Okay, this really meets our need now. So, you know, heck. Ali, we were 14, 15 years old before we finally made the switch to a more robust finance software. And and and how we went about it was initially the CFO saying, Hey, listen, for the reporting that we're doing, for taxes, for cash flow, for all the reports that we need, we're really kinda as far as we're gonna go in the software that we're using. I've talked to some CFOs in my a little CFO group and they all rave about Business Central. so we looked at it and and eventually we did choose to go with Business Central. Other opportunities and I'll call let's talk about RD just a tad bit here. RD is a wild card because in my particular experience in business, and I I'll pick on Ash, your partner Ash. it was by a phone call from Ash that I discovered a pretty unique AI talking agent that I thought, man, so I wasn't even looking, it just fell in my lap. I listened to the voice recordings, and I'll say, I who knew the business and knew that it was fake could not tell that it was fake. I mean, unlike the ones that I, if I call, you know, Dwar today to order a necklace for my daughter's 15th birthday, which I actually did this morning, the AI agent is terrible. And I've got to tell it, hey, I know you're an AI agent, get me to a real person because I needed an overnight shift and not three day and and and it was able to do that. But in your particular case, Case, it was just a seamless, my God. it's like watching the Segway for the first time or the hoverboard. It's like I didn't know this technology existed. And this is running and real. So for things on the RD side, I think some of it's serpendipitous. You might be in the midst of something else and run across an opportunity. Otherwise, what we do internally is, you know, as as far as picking softwares, from an organizational standpoint. point, we really kind of just stick with the commercially available softwares for tracking, whether that's something as simple as spreadsheets or something as advanced as databases tied into queries where we're pulling it out now through AI. So I hope that answers your question, Ali.

Ali Merchant 22:00 No, absolutely. Gives me, you know, more questions actually. but does answer the original question. okay. That being said, you know, so let's say that's how you go into a process selecting, you know, what to let's say automate in this case or where to, you know, im use the technology. And I think you are right, you know, in practical world it's not like very one two three an answer. It's like very balancing acts, sometimes you get to know from somewhere, sometimes you hunt for it, sometimes you just, you know, come across it. Uh

Adam Henderson 22:32 Sometimes it just is in your lap.

Ali Merchant 22:34 yeah. And you know. Then you have to decide that okay, how much time do I have, how much energy you have, and then what is the priority right now? And then in that case you decide okay, should I just go with a safe, safe option or should I, you know, try this one, which is not like a very small company obviously, but you know, it's like it is a promising company. It's growing, it's growing quickly. If someone with experience is leading that project, they're able to generally find that sweet spot where the cost is affordable or very competitive, but the service is equally high quality. So that being said, you know, so now that you have selected a use case. What is that sign when you feel that, okay, now I can roll it out wider within my operations?

Adam Henderson 23:20 Well Every business that I've been in has been had our biggest r constraint was security. So healthcare, I was primarily in healthcare. we worked from everything from Indy Anderson to Orlando Health, the New York Presbyterian, Vanderbilt, large Tiffany accounts that everybody knows. and they're all governed by HIPAA and high-tech, and quite frankly, internal compliance regulations. And a lot of times those internal compliance regulations outweigh even the statutory regulations. So we're always kind of in a high security environment. The same thing with GovCon. So if you're working with the Department of War, you know, first and foremost is compliance and security. I think our approach is a little bit different because first off it limits the products that we can even use. they've got to be meet the government's in this case, the government standards or the healthcare organization's standards before they're even eligible. So maybe somebody not in such sensitive business has a hundred options. I might have 10. as far as adopting and rolling out, you know, We have just had tremendous CIOs. And a CIO is worth their weight in gold uh in just prevention. So the old term, an ounce of prevention, is better than a pound of cure, applies in this specific arena because infrequently, if ever, did we did massive rollouts all at once? We had a beta environment, a very controlled beta environment, with benchmarks and standards that had to be met before we say release the kraken. So in my world, given the vast quantity of security surrounding it, our beta testing could last upwards of six months sometimes, which as an owner is painstaking because I've made the investment. I personally at month three am like, okay, we're good to go. But not until all boxes are checked, even I will not allow something to roll out in its general environment. And of course, if you have a good vendor, they will get you together with the SMEs, the subject matter experts on their end to help guide you through the beta testing to kind of speed that along. So if I was to make a checklist, and again, depending on the software, I would use my my original document, my use case document to make my checkboxes and then put all the IT restraints on the end of that. So okay, it meets all of my user requirements, it meets all of my IT standards. Okay, we're ready to go. typically speaking, I would say over the course of thirty years, beta testing for us was typically done within thirty days of purchase or adoption. Okay.

Ali Merchant 26:14 And how do you how would you, bring all the teams on board? Change can be difficult at times, right? how you've been

Adam Henderson 26:20 I'm glad you asked, Ali, because, you know, g given I'm closer to sixty than I am forty, I I I would say this is, you know, back where everybody came into an office, you really could exemplify culture. You could adequately keep somebody in the room that had more questions. You could, you know, again spontaneously move to another subset of subjects under the same topic because nobody was going anywhere. I could see if somebody was on Facebook or TikTok or Instagram on their phone. I could see if they were tired or unengaged. in the modern world where just like this podcast, we use Teams and Zoom and Cisco to meet, it it does lend itself to a little bigger of a challenge. Now with that said, I only hire executives that I trust. So if I'm having an executive meeting, I don't care if they're in a dental chair, grocery shopping or sitting at their desk, because I have the right people on board. That's first. if you hire the right people, you don't worry about the little things like that because they're you commensurate professionals that work like you work. So I I don't really worry about that. Now on the other teams, say if I'm dealing with regional managers and below, and this isn't a knock because as professional as they may be, they have their own life before the executive management team shows up. They're running things. They have a 40, 50, or 60 hour work week already. And now they're accommodating this new initiative. And that's a little bit more challenging on teams in Zoom because, you know, for instance, 10 o'clock on Monday, they have a standard meeting that they're always in, and you overrun it with your objective. So you really got to be cognizant of what they've got going on internally. And I think the best way to town there is to have individual conversations before the group meeting to get Everybody on the same page and maybe, dare I say, excited about the direction you're going so that when you have that first meeting, it isn't deer in the headlights, new concept, but they've already had an opportunity to use their, education, experience, and big brain to further vet out in their own mind's eye what it could mean to them. And then they ask really good questions in that first meeting. and I've done it both ways. sometimes necessity. is the catalyst for you know just getting everybody on the phone call and and you and Ash can can tell anybody that'll listen when Adam's gonna have a meeting, Adam's gonna have a meeting and he's not waiting for anybody to clear up. We're having it now, right? and and I just found that even though necessity sometimes dictates that, it truly isn't maybe the most effective way To gain acceptance from the people that are physically going to be an integ of deciding which software or program you're going to go with, or quite frankly, when you're at the 30,000 foot view, sometimes talking to the payroll specialist is only going to give you a limited amount of information. Whereas you talk about the new employee that was hired three weeks ago and had their first paycheck and it was screwed up, you get a whole different, say, user idea of what we're looking for. So those are that's really an abstract answer. So to clean it up, Ali, I think the bet the best way that I would recommend for anybody. that was vetting out new programs or software. Is meet with stakeholders from the very low end to the very high end if you have the time to do so, and at least have a verbal conversation with them about what you're doing, why you're doing it, and why you're calling them. So that you frame that first conversation so they feel part of the group, because none of us do this alone, man. Everybody has an idea. And you know, you'll be surprised when you look at the ground level of any organization that. Maybe the circumstances or economic climate that that person came up in is their hindrance to being the boss versus their aptitude. I find very, very intelligent people on the production level if you just take the time to sit down and talk with them.

Ali Merchant 30:36 I am still I am now learning to, manage a little virtually because now that So at one point

Adam Henderson 30:41 Yeah.

Ali Merchant 30:42 of time the business was growing so quickly that we said that everyone has to be in office. And today, still, our operations team, in fact, everyone, is still 100% in the office. And you know, as you rightly mentioned, it's much easier to manage, keep things secured. But you know, now the executive leadership, now we are in a very different phase where the business is growing so quickly that we are always traveling, meeting customers. And I'm slowly and gradually learning how to operate that when I agree with you. It's a little challenging, but you know, because it's otherwise it's so easy. You can just see what someone is doing and you know, get hold of them.

Adam Henderson 31:17 A hundred percent.

Ali Merchant 31:18 Yeah. that being said, you know. With any technology when you're deploying, when you go through these multiple transformations and multiple technology revolutions, so to speak, right? And you deploy so many things, something at some point of time is bound to go wrong. Not necessarily, but maybe sometimes. Like, what would be your safety net whenever you did these kind of have these kind of initiatives? What was your safety net that if you know?

Adam Henderson 31:45 Yeah. Yeah.

Ali Merchant 31:46 something some technology fails, this is how we'll keep the operations running.

Adam Henderson 31:50 Well, Ali, you could break that down to something as simple as network connectivity. so hey, we started this call this morning, and in my home, I have three different networks running because I work from home and it's critically important to my day-to-day. So just for my home network, I have three separate modems running so that if in the event something goes wrong, I can quickly literally within seconds switch over. I I would apply that same thing to the commercial side. So for instance, in my experience, you know, concurrent running, it's a Expensive to run two softwares because ultimately somebody's having to do the same work twice in order to say, hey, yeah, this is up and running and it's efficient. But most of the time, what I found during the beta testing, you can limit your liability exposure by having a thorough beta testing environment to prevent them from, you know, again, an ounce of prevention is worth a ton. On a cure, you can run a lot of these things in tandem to prevent maybe the the bigger things from creeping up. Now, with that said, I'll pick on hardware for a second here. from a hardware standpoint, you know, remember the day where Only NASA had a terabyte of information. I have five terabytes on the computer that I'm talking to you right now, right? So the cost of hardware has become so commoditized that you it's really a low cost entry to back up. you can have say for every 10 bodies or 20 bodies, one or two extra machines or utilities. And again, this is for office work, not manufacturing, but there are things that you can do to quickly redeploy hardware because the cost has has come down so much. now on the software side, that becomes a little bit more challenging. And again, we're picking on big corporate systems like financial systems, payroll systems, AI systems. I'd be remiss to say with any prudent beta testing, short of network connectivity or a hack, a cyber hack would be another one that you know throws a wrench in the system that you got to be prepared for. I would say that that's really how I've prepared for them in my business ventures. remember I owned an insurance and financial services company along the way too for 13 years, which lent itself to a whole different set of regulatory requirements. but but the The bottom line is, in order to adequately back up critical systems, I think beta testing is is job number one to make sure that it's close as close to correct out of the gates. And then once you're out of the gates, you know, I'll pick on just key resources. we have always had a phone chain that ends with an executive during Armageddon. So again. This is not new technology. This is age-old very pragmatic advice is when, you know, shit hits the fan for a la lack of a better term, you know, the pick up the phone and you're calling up and calling up until w we've got a solution to provide.

Ali Merchant 34:57 A practical insight. Alright. So, one last question from us: if you had to give just one advice to follow to leaders who are embarking on a journey of transformation, whether they be AI. At this point of time, mostly it's AI or any other technology. What would be that one piece of advice that has always helped you make those transformation as easy and as smooth as possible?

Adam Henderson 35:21 Patience. That would be my biggest practical advice is patience because guess what man? It's always easy to run for the shiny coin under the fountain, right? It takes a little bit more discipline, dedication and thoroughness in order to make the right decision. So I found, and and of course y you hit it on the head moments ago, as you get older, this is something you cannot buy, experience. y I've seen young managers, you know, they want to make a splash, they you know, ultimately are trying to impress, you know, the next level so they can move up the tier. and my advice would definitely just be patient. you know Don't rush to a decision on a software that you think might be viable without thorough due diligence because it's just something that you don't want to be the guy where you thought you were gonna get a gold star and you get a pink slip. You know what I mean? Because you just didn't take the time required. And again, we're not talking about you know simple constructs here, Ellie, these are very advanced, very important decisions that can't be taken lightly because in my case I just said is, we're a highly secure environment. So the first thing that I'm asking my people to do is go find things that go find the softwares that check the compliance boxes so that it we can even v evaluate it for our use case. Well that takes time. I would Strongly advise to any executive listening, patience, patience, patience, because you know, your teens are out there. And this has been a hard lesson for me. I I was in the Marine Corps, man. Patience is not a virtue. Patience is unwarranted and unbecoming of being a Marine. You're not patient for anything, right? So when I hit the streets in my 20s, man, that was the one thing that I was missing, is just patience. I was more of a bull and a bull. In a China shop to boot because I wasn't on a construction side. I was in an office environment and I still had some of I'll say my Marine Corps ways and go, go, go, go. What I've learned over 30 years is slow, slow, slow might be the better, more calculated approach for success. Because once everybody feels that the use case is met, the compliance features are checked off, and it, you know, we're we're ready to buy it, your adoption is. Is just so much better than just cramming, something down somebody's throat. So I hope that answers your question, Ali.

Ali Merchant 37:52 Absolutely. And I need to emphasize on this that, you know, you true spoke like a true leader, experienced leader, let me put it this way, because while this is counterintuitive, everyone is talking about, fast, hustle, right? And sometimes you end up doing it twice, thrice. You might as well, take your time but do it in a way. Yeah, be right the first time.

Adam Henderson 38:11 Right the first time. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Ali Merchant 38:15 That's such a wise advice. Alright, thank you so much, Adam, for doing this. This was wonderful, very practical, and I'm sure our viewers got a lot of practical things to, you know, help them survive, you know, thrive in this era of AI. Thank you so much once again.

Adam Henderson 38:34 I appreciate Ellie. Yeah, you guys have a great day. Great speaking with you. Uh bye

Ali Merchant 38:38 Likewise, thank you so much.