The Founders Truth

Carlo Mahfouz: 00:00

Hello, unconventional founders, and welcome to The Founders Truth, a conversation with Carlo Mahfouz and guests. Episode four continues the conversation with Dave Van BenneKum, author of the first self help book on national security. As we discuss AI's role in communication, the difficulties of introducing new ideas, and the hard realities of change.

Dave Van Bennekum: 00:28

And you start to lose that that communication, right? We start to become a little more concerned about ourselves, we feel a little exposed, those kind of things. And maybe, I don't know, maybe AI is a way to kind of, or technology as a whole, a way to kind of, if you can work it, is a way to overcome that, you know, kind of initial instinct to just retreat.

Carlo Mahfouz: 00:57

Yeah. Okay. Again, I think here I wanna touch on so many great things you mentioned because I I think it's really important. I think I would start with I think AI we'll we'll talk about AI and technology, what it brings into, you know, kind of bridging that gap. But let's talk about comedians a little bit because it kind of highlights the point I was making before very well.

Carlo Mahfouz: 01:20

Comedians most of the time are talking about reality as real as it is. Like it is funny because you know almost how absurd things are in that dimension. And I think that's, it's interesting, the second book, which we not didn't discuss yet, the kind of main theme about it, which is dedicated to teams, the founder against teams, is absurdity. And the reason I picked absurdity is because one of the best ingredients to create space for others to participate is if there is a certain level of lightheartedness or like not being too serious about it. Because if you think about it, when we retreat to our own camps, we're being very boxed in what we feel comfortable in.

Carlo Mahfouz: 02:07

But the absurdity part or like kind of the comedic element is saying, I'm not taking it as seriously when I'm having a conversation about it, and I'm being playful with it. And that playfulness, what it creates, it creates that room and space for someone from a different camp to join me because they are as well taking it not seriously and playful. So now we have common ground. In the playfulness of it and the almost comedic component of it. We've created the common ground, even though we still sit in our respective different views and our opinions on our like kind of boxes of analytical and like we still sit on those.

Carlo Mahfouz: 02:40

But in that gap where, you know, we are being unserious, we created a common ground. And that space that which is, you know, core in book one, which is ambiguity, that space where it's fuzzy, it's not clear, it's like unserious, it's like playful, that's where we meet. And that's where we can start because now we have some common ground which we share, which we don't need to say like, you're wrong or right, we're both being playful about it so we don't care. Like it's no longer important. And I think that's fascinating.

Carlo Mahfouz: 03:13

Where I think technology can lend itself is if we start using it for those avenues. Simply put is know, someone has an engineer and someone tell that, you know, give me what I want to say in a story. Have you tried to listen to a scientist, for example, explaining something? You don't understand anything. Like, I don't know what you're talking about.

Carlo Mahfouz: 03:34

Right? So they don't have to figure that out. You can just, you know, give them whatever you and tell it. Okay, tell me that with an analogy or give me a metaphor for whether it's a stock and automatically, I'm not going to say it's going to work, but automatically you moved from one space to another, at least for you to reflect on and to see how far that distance is. And that's a great starting point and vice versa.

Carlo Mahfouz: 03:56

Like I take a very highly philosophical concept or spiritual and you've, you know, you've written about it or you've been discussing it, like just record, you don't need to actually write the record and then send the transcript. That's how easy it is these days. And then tell it, okay, put this in a model or a framework. And I mean, I just did this for my book for a few of the chapters and I'm like, holy cow, it's amazing. Like, it's amazing what it created out of like the level of information, which was high level philosophical, and now it drew it in one triangle.

Carlo Mahfouz: 04:24

I was like, oh my God, like, this is really cool. That translation, yeah, of course you need to edit it and fix it and like, but that's as well bridging like that's moving you to the common grounds as well, which is, I think is impressive. I think it's something which we didn't have access to before, and now no matter who you are, you're, you know, 20 years old, like just coming fresh into college or an expert who've been in the business for fifty years have access to that. And I think that's almost unbelievable.

Dave Van Bennekum: 04:54

Yeah. I agree. I mean, you're really kind of hitting on, you know, kind of a story I told earlier about buying pizza. Right? It's just to lighten the mood a little bit, to have

Carlo Mahfouz: 05:02

a little

Dave Van Bennekum: 05:02

fun, to chat them up, you know, to get them a little more comfortable. I mean, I I did a little bit more. At least I like to think I did a little bit more. Somebody's gonna watch this and is gonna say, no, Dave, that's about all you did. But but, you know, I did things like I actually took on I wrote some of the technical documents for the models and I did you know, so I could learn what they were doing and those But kind things as I I think what it is, it it just takes a lot of confidence to do that.

Dave Van Bennekum: 05:27

Right? It takes a lot of confidence to walk in as someone who has no experience in a world and then come in and say, okay, I'm gonna jump in and write your technical document for you. Or I mean, thankfully somebody else was kind of looking over my shoulder, but Or, you know, I'm gonna chat you up and stuff like that. One of the things, I mean, you have the lightening the mood part of the comedian and those kind of things. But, you know, the other part about it is just how much hard work they really put into it.

Dave Van Bennekum: 05:57

And, you know, it's years and years and years of practice and refinement and, you know, to try and get to where they are. And that's something that I think is pretty rare, right? To actually kind of put your know, be willing to put yourself on stage and then just figure it out and get better and better and better. You know, one of my favorite quotes is from the comedian Steve Martin who says, you know, basically, he's like, be so good that they can't ignore you, right? And his journey about, you know, he did stand up comedy for like fifteen years.

Dave Van Bennekum: 06:30

You know, he did refinement for like four or five years, and then he had like three or four years of success. Right? Right. But no one's really got that time. Yeah.

Dave Van Bennekum: 06:39

Maybe there's a, you know, we can leverage technology in a way that shortens his twenty year journey to something like, you know, maybe six months or a year or two to kind of give us that confidence to actually be able to interact with each other when everything around you is telling you, no, you should be kind of going back into your safety zone?

Carlo Mahfouz: 07:00

Know, I think on that angle specifically, what comes to mind is that, know, typically what ends up happening from the beginning, we've optimized almost that confidence out of the conversation because you as just starting college, we're telling you, figure out what you want. As if it's that simple. Right? Figure out which ones you want, etcetera, figure everything out before you had the chance even to experience it. And I think that's, you know, the speed of what this and again, the markets now, and if we're talking about from a business perspective, it demands from you to know almost be precise and everything you know and all of that.

Carlo Mahfouz: 07:40

But the reality of the matter is a lot of the times you don't know. Right? And how can you iterate as quickly as possible to actually not necessarily know, but get closer? Because you really never the reality is as much as we like it, we never get to it because the markets are always changing, you're always changing, your preferences are changing, you're like, things are always in the move. Right?

Carlo Mahfouz: 08:00

So you will always get as close as you can in that moment, but, you know, to secure, you know, a, you know, revenue or to secure your kind of degree or whatever, you get as close as you can. But at the by the time you get there, you actually everything around you has changed, and you need to change with it again. And I think that's what technology is forcing on us anyway. Right? Forget about it in the personal career track or anything.

Carlo Mahfouz: 08:22

I think it is know, has serious implication on that too today. But every ten ten years, you know, I I I can put it in terms of code. Like, code usually, you know, libraries and stuff because they used to you know, you need to be backward compatible because code, like the libraries that you're using, keep changing almost on a yearly basis. Like, right? And some of them are changing now on on monthly basis.

Carlo Mahfouz: 08:45

So how do you deal with that? Okay. You no longer have a ten year breath to basically wait and, like, you know, change stuff and whatever, which used to be the case. And that's fine. I think that's the new reality and then leverage technology in the same principle, like leverage it to actually allow you to iterate much faster, not to expect to have the answer.

Carlo Mahfouz: 09:03

Think this is where one mindset it's getting stuck in old paradigm where you had probably the time and you're trying to move it into the new paradigm. You don't have the time. It's as simple as that. And you don't know what you need to know. Like that's the truth either.

Carlo Mahfouz: 09:17

Like you're coming into the career, you have almost it's easier for you to basically guess honestly than to make a decision and that decision to suffer through it for the next three years. It's almost like that level of speed that we're operating in today and level of patience that we can bring in back into what we by shifting what our focus is. Okay, we it's not about actually me knowing it's more about me testing multiple things very quickly. And if you talk about innovation or any of this many ideas very quickly iterate as fast as you can so you can figure things out. And we need to bring that back into the conversation as a constant, not as something that you do once or that you get tired of or you can burn out because that's another dimension of it where if you keep doing that while and have a different expectation, you burn out.

Carlo Mahfouz: 10:05

So you end up having expectations which are different, but you're forced to do this, and they don't meet. So what ends up happening, you kind of suffer through it.

Dave Van Bennekum: 10:13

Yeah. And I think it comes down to, you know, what we talked about earlier too, just like, you know, when you don't know, right, you've got all this data, but you just try to make sense of it, right? You don't really know. You kind of have to tap into those values, right, and an identity and those type of things. And I think there's just such a pull, right, to again, go back into your comfort zone, look at the data, make short term, you mentioned this earlier, you'll make short term decisions because that's what the data is telling you as you're two, three months out when you're missing that long term four, five, six year kind of strategy.

Dave Van Bennekum: 10:51

And so, leads me to my next question because And this one's probably going to be interested to hear what you think about this one. Because when I started my journey, right, it was a really simple idea. It was just, you know, it was a number of years ago, I turned to my wife and I said, hey, I'm gonna write a book on national security. And she said, Dave, that is the most boring idea I have ever heard in my life. And so, I kind of just realized that, well, you know, there's gonna be a big disconnect.

Dave Van Bennekum: 11:21

We were heading into a big sea change. We're starting to see that sea change now. And we were gonna be in a really bad position where we weren't going to be able to talk about it, right? And kind of similar to everything you've talked about that the ones that are kind of working in those think tanks and in government and in academia, it's gonna be hard for them to change, right? And I always talk about this as in a way where I say, you know, people who write their papers for peer reviews don't see you as your peers and it's not really to say that there's, that that work isn't valuable because of course it is, is just to say that expertise means little if it doesn't connect with us.

Carlo Mahfouz: 12:00

Mhmm.

Dave Van Bennekum: 12:00

And so so when I kind of, you know, first started down this journey and I and I realized that, okay, well, the people I thought that would be interested don't really express a lot of interest. Right? There's you know, they've they're comfortable in their journals. They're comfortable in their conferences and stuff like that. It's weird.

Dave Van Bennekum: 12:21

I mean, let's face it. I, you know, sometimes I, you know, the I always talk about the the difference between being a maverick and being weird is in the eyes of the beholder. Right? So some people might say, hey, Dave, you're really challenging the norm. Others say, hey, you're you're kinda you're kinda weird.

Dave Van Bennekum: 12:34

Yeah. So that's something you have to deal with. But as I decided maybe a year or two ago, I, you know, I had to pivot, right? I had to say, okay, well knocking on this door isn't working. So, had to go direct to consumer.

Dave Van Bennekum: 12:48

Okay. I had to go to the people who really are kind of wanted to know more information, were really interested in engaging, but were afraid to raise their hand and ask a question because nobody wants to raise their hand just to get it chopped off. But I found, so I found out like, okay, I gotta de emphasize the national security stuff and really enforce or reinforce the self help stuff, the self And help there were two parts of that journey. I'm just kinda curious. I'll let you talk because I'm talking too much here.

Dave Van Bennekum: 13:16

But one is, as I went down that road, I realized that the more I went down there looking to make that connection, the more isolated I got. And I extended myself, extended myself, extended myself, and having trouble, right, so I'm kinda leaving the past behind. I'm going looking for this new market that's out there. And, it was challenging, right, to be able to kinda talk about it, to express yourself, to kind of, you know, kind of send out what you're trying to accomplish. And get people comfortable with like, well, I'm not really interested in national security, why would I be interested in you type of argument.

Dave Van Bennekum: 13:55

And one of the things I realized in that journey was that, You know, I went to a small school in Western Pennsylvania. I was a marine infantry officer when I first came in and did some other stuff in the marines. I did lots of organizational change and those kind of things. But I didn't graduate from a liberal arts college. I don't have a PhD in sociology or psychology or what you would typically think about in, you know, a self help author.

Carlo Mahfouz: 14:23

Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Van Bennekum: 14:24

And so I kinda had to learn that. Right? I I basically take my basic observations, you know, what's the difference between being a maverick and being a weird, and then I use AI recently, I mean, now that we have it, and just ask the question. And then you find, well, hey, there are actual psychologists and sociologists that write papers about this kind of stuff, and you And, start to read know, I've been using it to kind of shape myself more into this world. So, guess the question to you is, as your One is the challenge you see when we talk about change and the need for onboarding for change of extending yourself so far out that you kind of realize that people have to have you have to give them space to have their own conversations.

Dave Van Bennekum: 15:11

Mhmm. But in the meantime, you're extending yourself out. You feel like you're more at risk. You feel more isolated in the process. And then whether or not, like me, if if AI or or any sort of other technological platform can help in kind of making that transition?

Carlo Mahfouz: 15:30

So okay. Where to start? I think

Dave Van Bennekum: 15:33

I know. I'm just trying to get you to be my guidance counselor.

Carlo Mahfouz: 15:39

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. And I'm I'm gonna do my best here to answer it and and the way I I could find it most helpful.

Carlo Mahfouz: 15:45

So, I mean, let's split it to two part. We'll talk about the technology wanted to kinda could help. I think I think one of the first pieces to the puzzle, which I experienced myself, and I think you're experiencing too in this journey as well, is sometimes when we're moving ourselves into transitioning into different things, we bring a lot of baggage in with it. And I think I'm going to lean completely here on like, you know, the questions I set up the book to kind of engage in because I think it really guides the conversation. I think with context we're talking about what is happening, you know, what is happening as is, where you are.

Carlo Mahfouz: 16:22

And then with time, we're talking about like what is now in the present and then with, you know, who's asking. And for you, I think that is a really interesting dimension is, is you've recognized a little at who you are in that conversation, and you're starting to get clarity a lot of and you're between the maverick and, you know, the weird and all of that. Like, that's kind of the bias that you bring both from a perception of others into you, but at the same time, it carries carries with you because you say it and it comes through. So it you're manifesting it to a certain extent. So that's, I think, part of it.

Carlo Mahfouz: 16:53

Understanding as well how big of the shift is and what are some of these, you know, changes in your identity, if I wanna put it in that way, from being having the background as a change, someone who's managed with organizational change and one with a, you know, military background and understanding all of these dimensions and low at the same time. Now moving into a space where you're a thought leader or a speaker and those are someone trying to support others, which you've done, I think, in a lot of all of these functions, but now in a completely different medium, now in a completely different way of approaching it. I think that change and that transformation and what does that entail and both from a you know, who's the target audience, who's the customer for this, who who wanna be listened. I think that's you know, you're starting to kind of touch what that looks like. And I think that's a very difficult journey.

Carlo Mahfouz: 17:45

I think part of the problem is a lot of the times we think we know, and then once we start getting onto it, we realize, oh, okay. How far? And similar to what you just said that, you know, who you expected to be originally, your target audience might not be. And to be honest, I think even who you expect it to be today might not be them either. And as well, what the box that you shaped yourself in as well today might not that be it either as well.

Carlo Mahfouz: 18:07

It's just part of the journey where you are. And I'm probably where to take it forward from here is first, you're already kind of expressing this type where recognizing where all of these dimensions are, but then understanding where are the gaps out of those. Okay. So you probably wanna reach bigger audiences. You wanna be able to have more people having that conversation, why they're not having that conversation.

Carlo Mahfouz: 18:31

Actually, these days in this climate, probably no one is able to have this conversation. Like, right? So you're actually, you have the solution to a very critical problem, but at the same time, the current, I would say, circumstances makes it even harder to penetrate those markets because today, I need two people, especially in The US probably talking about anything national security or anything has a political dimension, they're just going to go into extreme opposite right off the bat. Like, we're going to go into the almost fighting about it rather than actually even have a meaningful conversation, which sets the landscape for you to be very hard, which means that the problem exists, but it is so deeply ingrained that the work that requires take it forward is much more difficult. Then usually what comes to mind in that dialogue is then probably is it easier to start the journey with people who are much earlier in their process, like college grads, for example, right?

Carlo Mahfouz: 19:27

Where some of these ideologies have not been shaped because they have the space to actually engage in that topic or understand it so they can have the dialogue. And that's a lot of the thinking, which I think is important. Once you start recognizing these pieces as you outlined them to me, I start like, okay, this audience is stuck in their ways and it's very hard. Like, okay, the specialists are stuck here and they don't know how to translate it. The people who are like already now because the political tensions and everything else, the dynamic of it, are already stuck into their opinions and are kind of bumping hands.

Carlo Mahfouz: 20:01

They don't have the space either. Who has the space? Right? Because that's what's required for the change. And I think that's a really interesting that's what is interesting about this process is start highlighting out what some of the gaps that might opportunities or potential opportunities might live in.

Dave Van Bennekum: 20:18

Yeah. You know, I talk a lot about, you know, the NASCO security thing is a tough conversation. But always say that, you know, every conversation when a government comes to change is a tough conversation. You know, it's organizational, if it's a personal challenge, obviously in national security, those kind of things. I think the, you know, we just, you know, I think we prefer just to avoid those altogether.

Dave Van Bennekum: 20:43

Mean, And, just you know, one of And so, I've really kind of tapped into a lot of my own personal journey, right, to kind of say, okay, well, I've been through these big organizational challenge, I've been through these big personal challenges. And then you have the education stuff and everything like that, but it's really about having that conversation. And I think it's just I don't know. I think that at least in this space, in the national security space, it seems like if you're in a private company or in a public company, if you're selling a product, whatever it may be, you can't avoid it, right? Because you're either selling your product or not, you're selling your service or not.

Dave Van Bennekum: 21:23

And the market is gonna tell you that you need to change, right? So, you're gonna change or you're going out of business or you're laying people off And or whatever it may in national security, it feels to me like a little different because most of the product, you know, that the sell we don't see it as a consumer product. You know, in other words, the people that kinda live in that world, academia or in these think tanks, whatever, they're not getting funded. Their paycheck isn't reliant on selling you on a product. Right?

Dave Van Bennekum: 21:58

They're getting paid in some other way through fundraising or, you know, what may be now. You know, there's been a recent trend that a lot of these non profits and and NGOs are struggling to raise funds these days.

Carlo Mahfouz: 22:09

Lot of Sure.

Dave Van Bennekum: 22:10

Showing their value, a lot of the vice myths, obviously, that exists today is is not you know, the money is going in kind of those separate directions and send it to them. And so there's I think they're feeling the need to change.

Carlo Mahfouz: 22:24

Yeah.

Dave Van Bennekum: 22:24

But if you don't feel it, right, if you don't actually sit there and you go to work every day and you realize if I lose this contract, I might lose my job or if I don't sell this thing on on TikTok or whatever it may be, my entire, you know, my startup or whatever it may be is just gonna go under. And it just doesn't seem to be that same mentality in this other world, right, this national security world, the international law and all that kind of stuff. I'm not sure why I digressed into that. There was a purpose for going into that, but I think I guess in the end, maybe going back to what we originally talked about is like can you change if you don't see the need in yourself to change? Like, if the incentives aren't there, you know, if the financial incentives aren't there or someone isn't telling you in your face that if you don't change, I'm going to another customer or another I'm sorry, another business or another provider.

Dave Van Bennekum: 23:26

How do you get over that hump?

Carlo Mahfouz: 23:28

You know, I think that's that's an interesting question. And and, seeing the need or willingness to change, in some ways, here where we start talking about agency a little bit and what you feel you have control over and not control over. And what I will bring into this at least is you will be forced to change whether you like it or not. Like the circumstances always, no matter what the incentives are, they force certain things to change. And whether sometimes you recognize them in time or recognize them to date or not recognize them at all or feel that you're doing something about it or not, I think we underestimate what the environment around us influence us and takes us to do.

Carlo Mahfouz: 24:14

Like, right? And I think as a first step is we should recognize that at the minimum. And I think that's challenging as well because it hits a little bit too hard home at I think this idea that we are in control of everything that we do and all of our decisions. The reality of the matter, we are not. Whether we like it or not, whether the things are influenced by the immediate circle or the bigger circle or the national circle, all of these things influence everything that you are doing.

Carlo Mahfouz: 24:41

I am part of multiple cultures, I've lived in different countries and whether you like it or not, very easy when they're looking from far away, you say you, you can decide on this or not. But when you're in it, really what's happening around you probably constitute more your decision making than anything else. So you're forced to change in a way, in any way regardless. So here probably the insight is, like, at this first step, recognize that because if you cannot admit how much these circumstances are influencing you to change, you cannot recognize that you need to change, right? In a way, because then you're almost living in your own story, your own bubble of what that story and narrative looks like.

Carlo Mahfouz: 25:29

And there you have control because it's a narrative and story that you own. In that story and narrative, you're always going to feel that there is no need for anything else. But that's not the reality. And that's the disconnect. So anyone who's living, I think that's probably it, anyone who's living in their own story can tell you like, I don't need to change because nothing else is impacting my story, I have full control of yours, of course, because it's your narrative.

Carlo Mahfouz: 25:53

But the second you start thinking that, oh, I don't have control. And to be honest, 90% of the things you're learning in your life, would say, I'm going to say 90 and this is going to be like probably hurt a lot of people, 90% you don't have control of. Like, right? You don't have control of the electricity, like a lot of things that you've ignored that are shaping what you have access to, how you live your life day to day, you don't have control of. And then you say, oh no, in that narrative and story, because that narrative and story is easy to trust, that narrative and story makes you feel comfortable.

Carlo Mahfouz: 26:25

Right? And destabilizing it, your brain is our hue, like it's going to go into the defense and say like, no, I don't want to, like nothing. It starts, probably I'm going to go back, start by recognizing that you are influenced already. Half of your decisions today or what you think you have control of are influenced by things that you actually have no control over. And I think that's a great starting point.

Dave Van Bennekum: 26:49

I agree. Sorry to cut you off there, yeah, I agree. But yeah, I also think they're gonna come full circle back to where we started this with your three kind of analytical, creative Yeah. Philosophical. Like, I I also think there is just this thing about us that we don't like to be confronted with the fact that we may not be as smart or as athletic or as pretty or as as funny as we think we are.

Dave Van Bennekum: 27:14

And so, as we kind of we kind of get forced to say, okay, I gotta venture out, And someone might tell me that, hey, you know, yeah, I'm not buying into what you're selling. That is a hard thing to take. And I think that's why, again, whether you're in a business or you work in national security, whatever it may be, is why we retreat back. And I think that it could be something where technology helps us. Know, whole point of writing a self help book is not to say this is the way to have a better conversation.

Dave Van Bennekum: 27:53

You know, to get back to that, you know, story about, you know, handing out slices of pizza, it's just to say you can have a this is one example of a way you can have a conversation. Yeah. You know, whether you like it or not, then maybe it sparks an idea for you to be able to go out there and say, okay. Well, this thing cost this book wasn't worth the $10 or whatever it was. And and but it sparked my idea.

Dave Van Bennekum: 28:14

And my idea is much better. I'll go off and do this. Right? It's about giving over that initial hump because we're afraid. Right?

Dave Van Bennekum: 28:22

Whether you're a PhD in economics or international relations or you're just a truck driver or you're a nurse or whatever it may be you're doing in life, we're often afraid just to extend ourselves.

Carlo Mahfouz: 28:35

Yeah.

Dave Van Bennekum: 28:35

Yeah. Because we'll become vulnerable. You know, someone might point back at us, someone might chop our hand off if we're, you know, kind of if we raise our hand and ask a question. And that just kind of brings us into, you know, a world where we're just kind of confining ourselves.

Carlo Mahfouz: 28:57

Absolutely. I think a good example I'd like to bring up here is, as a child, you used to face the world. As a parent, you put your child in the world and you know how much reality is dangerous, right? A child can injure themselves at any point. Yet if you lock them in and into a house and not allow them to you know, have some bruises, you know, jump around a little bit, etcetera, they actually don't build an immunity, they don't build resilience, they don't build and the research now is even reinforcing that even further, that children needs to be exposed to almost the elements in all of their forms and the risks that that comes, carries with it.

Carlo Mahfouz: 29:35

When we grow as adults though, we think we've kind of gone that period. We think now we know enough, we are safe enough that actually the world is no longer like that. The reality is in some ways less vulnerable or risky, but it is, like, right? The only problem is the decision now we are super self conscious about it, we actually don't dare to do it. When you were a kid, you don't think about a lot of these things and your parents are probably restricting your environment.

Carlo Mahfouz: 30:05

As an adult, you create that prison for yourself. You put yourself in that prison. And to be fair, I mean, not that everyone else has been shaping you to put yourself in that prison in the beginning because reality, would say, and I think that's fair, reality is harsh in so many ways. Is full of full of risk. It requires a certain it's so fragile, there is so many vulnerability in it, but at the same time, that's the beauty of it.

Carlo Mahfouz: 30:33

Like that's really the interesting part in it. And if we just shut ourselves from all of that, and no matter what conversation, whether national security or change or anything else, we are not living almost. Because we're not accepting reality as it is. And I think that's something almost a reckoning, but at the same time, an opportunity. Because if that's what all it takes, it's so easy.

Carlo Mahfouz: 31:04

It's not that far away as well. We've engaged in this actually as kids, we know what that is. We just kind of kind of have to come back to that a little bit.

Dave Van Bennekum: 31:14

Yeah. I agree. I I guess probably a great way to kinda sum up this interview is I I think you're right. I think it's the if you're willing to do it, if you're willing to take the adventure, if you're willing to test yourself and extend yourself, whether you're a founder or any other kind of role, it's stressful. I mean, I know it.

Dave Van Bennekum: 31:35

I know it from firsthand. It's a stressful journey. It's a difficult journey. It comes with a lot of strife. But, if you can make that transition, if you can actually extend yourself and kind of get over the isolation, you can stick to your values or look at the long term strategy, those kind of things, it's also incredibly rewarding.

Dave Van Bennekum: 31:59

And that's one of things I love about it is I love the fact that almost in some ways I almost in some ways feel like I've benefited from the fact that I've had such a hard time with the people, the audience I initially thought would be well, because I've had to really kind of accept myself, I could have just quit, right?

Carlo Mahfouz: 32:23

Yeah, yeah.

Dave Van Bennekum: 32:23

But I, you know, I reminded myself that, you know, the person I was trying to talk to was my wife. Yeah. And that's the whole point of writing the book. And so, well, that's who I should be talking to, you know? And that's caused me to kind of go down this journey.

Dave Van Bennekum: 32:41

But it's so much easier, right, to just kind of not do it. And to look at the data within two or three month chunks. And to, you know, kind of stay in your office and not worry about what the HR person or the recruiter is doing three, three floors below, those kinds of things, to really be comfortable in what you're doing. It's so much difficult to kind of take this journey, in a way, it is so much more rewarding.

Carlo Mahfouz: 33:15

Yeah. And I think I'll add one more last thing to that specifically is it's not a you alone journey. Like, think this is what this is, I think, one of the most difficult thing to kind of comprehend in this is as well, we've been optimized that this is a huge journey, you have to go through all of these things, but you know, it's not. And you need all the help you can get, you need almost a whole like village around you or like a whole ecosystem around you to get there. And that's as important as anything else.

Carlo Mahfouz: 33:47

You need the parent who's making sure that you don't jump off the ledge as a kid, like, right? For you to extend yourself as far as you can, you need as well the support. Like it's not mutually exclusive and it's not a huge journey alone, it's like a huge journey with so many people around you that are, that at least vote or like kind of share the same vision. And I think that's important. That's us a lot of the times outside of the conversation and shouldn't be.

Dave Van Bennekum: 34:16

That's a perfect way. I think it's a perfect way to sum it up because, you know, in my own journey, I couldn't have done it without supporting my wife, obviously. You know, the fact that she's been tolerant of me to be able to kind of go through this has been a really good thing. And I always go back, you know, go back to that story when I was working at this financial services company. I didn't put myself in that development center.

Dave Van Bennekum: 34:39

Someone else, you know, had the audacity or someone else had to, you know, say, okay, I'm gonna put this guy who's the complete opposite to every other personality that's down there, I'm gonna put him down there, and we're just gonna see what happens. And so, the hero of that story, when I always tell him, isn't me. It's that person, that executive who decided to take the risk. And it actually worked out. Could, like I said, I mean it could have just really kind of gotten exactly the opposite way.

Dave Van Bennekum: 35:12

And so, couldn't be like, you know, those learnings that I got from my military time, obviously, in doing some of these other transformation work outside the military, all that goes into this book and then obviously my wife and stuff like that, and it couldn't have happened. I mean, there's a lot of me in it, but it couldn't have happened without them. And that's that's the important part.

Carlo Mahfouz: 35:36

Thank you so much for listening to the founder's truth, a space for opening your mind to new possibilities and thinking. One question to reflect on recognizing how difficult change is and how it impacts everyone around you. How are you recognizing the gap from which where your ideas are to where they need to go? And what small steps you can do to finish this gap? Thank you, and until the next episode.