Episodes
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This week Jepson has his friend Jordan Morrow, who have known each other for a while now in the data and analytics space. He helped pioneer and invent data literacy, which continues to evolve, so he now travels the world, speaking on it and helping companies and people out. Listen as Jordan and Jepson discuss subjects such as ultra running and the hero’s journey, the importance of learning from everyone, education and where it needs to change, and more about artificial intelligence.
About Jordan, ultra running 1:00The hero’s journey 7:30Everyone has a story and something to teach 20:00Vulnerability 28:00Superhero wife 41:20Priorities change, regret 47:00Writing code is so much easier now 57:30
“How many people in August 2022 thought ‘Hmm, I think in November Chat GPT is gonna launch’? It shifted the world. On January 2020, how many people were like ‘Hmm, I think a global pandemic’s gonna hit.’? It shifted the world. I think that you’re gonna set yourself up to fail if you don’t have a mindset for change, and change isn’t a bad thing, but it has such a negative connotation.” 47:15 -
In this week’s episode Jepson talks to David Hardoon, who is the Group Chief Data & AI Officer at UnionBank Philippines and Chief Executive Officer for Aboitiz Data Innovation. They talk about a few interesting concepts such as center of excellence and what that means, and then the importance of keeping and maintaining the momentum of your organization. They talk about the idea of taking risks and being happy, and the opposing concepts that we are wired for survival and avoiding risk, while at the same time we are wired for the hero’s journey.
Beginning David’s journey and video games 2:40Center of excellence 8:50A pivotal point in his life 16:00Defending the momentum 22:40Wanting to be happy in what you do 30:00Keep thinking new 41:00The art of asking questions 48:45
“Think of it this way, if you think about optimization and especially when you deal with a multi-objective optimization, never, in the real world, have an absolute maximum optimum. You will always have a scenario where you optimize for one thing and you sacrifice giving your underlying objectives.” 18:30
Davidroihardoon.com -
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Justin Harnish describes himself as a creator, promoter, and problem solver that loves to deliver the hoped-for future who utilizes science, mindfulness, and storytelling in product development and product management to ensure success. Justin and Jepson discuss AI and its trajectory, and where it stands among actual consciousness, discussing whether it’s truly conscious or not and what it lacks in order to become truly conscious.
Justin’s story 1:10AI race being driven by greed or empathy 12:30AI observing Newton’s laws 23:50Is GPT conscious? What is it missing? 30:00When you’d give up fighting that it’s not a synthetic organism 44:20A singular you 55:40Lucid dreaming 63:45Believing in a synthetic consciousness 66:00What makes up a good life 69:15Being your authentic self while also taking feedback from your tribe 81:00AI will change everything for this generation 98:55
“If you can have that intellectual fortitude, if you can be mindful in your worst time so the individual at the TSA doesn’t know that you’re having a bad day, you don’t take it out on the waiter or the waitress, that’s living a good life.” 7:28
www.justinaharnish.com
@justinaharnish -
Today Jepson sits down with Erik Boduch, the CEO of Revcast, Founder of 24 and Up, and co-founder of Once and Always Pendo to discuss startups and various aspects that go into them such as the importance of blissful ignorance and why that is necessary to get a startup going. They talk about what a venture studio is vs what a venture capitalist is, the studio being more like a co-founder setup where they’re a lot more involved and it gives the early stage companies a lot more resources to help them succeed.
Startups 1:30Product market fit 6:25Pivoting 12:4024 and Up, venture studio vs venture capitalist 18:10Common themes and issues for founders 21:40The generative AI space 24:00Where product and AI is heading 33:00Picking an appropriate partner to go to market 36:50Hiring senior vs junior talent 42:00Internships 46:40Mental reset 49:15“In the majority of cases, startups need to have that direct relationship and control of the relationship with those early customers because without that direct relationship and control, they have a very important bottleneck or factor that’s out of your control and that becomes very difficult, especially if they don’t have leverage…I think it’s important that startups in the majority of cases aren’t overly reliant on partnerships for that sales component.” 37:20
Twitter:@eboduch -
In this episode Jepson talks to Romain Fouache who is the CRO of Dataiku and who comes from a technical background. The cost of failure is going down and the ability to identify the failures beforehand is rapidly increasing, which is going to save companies so much more time in analyzing their data. “How do you give people the ability to do many things while feeling confident in the fact that the things that are done are the right things?” Romain gives some tips on the middle ground companies should be shooting for when trying to give people autonomy, but at the same time establish enough boundaries so that things don’t get out of hand.
Romain’s story and background 1:30A mature timeline 5:10Why Europe hasn’t taken a more aggressive VC culture 10:00Becoming aware of Dataiku 23:15Democratization success stories 28:05Being a sales leader and communication 33:05Making sure work doesn’t consume all of you 37:15The future of the company and the next generation 45:40“I think the exciting thing there is the cost of failure, so if it takes me weeks and I’m working for you, if I come back next week and I say it didn’t work, OK? But if I come back in a year and a half on one project and say it didn’t work, and you’ve paid me for a year and a half, that’s a very different comparison. That’s something I’m very excited about is the cost of failure of a bad idea is quickly going to zero.” 6:24 -
Today Jepson sits down with Ed Watal, the founder and principal of Intellibus, an IT strategy consultancy with 65 transformation consultants. Ed gives advice for IT strategy and architecture due to his business acumen and deep IT knowledge and he has also built and sold various Tech and AI startups. Jepson and Ed talk about self awareness and AI, and what makes us individuals and separates us from machine intelligence. They discuss World Digital Governance and rules and ethics that need to be set in order to make sure AI tech is not abused, especially with the general public that just doesn’t understand how it works.
Coming to the US to work for Deutsche Bank 7:00The banking industry and archaic systems 13:30Building good culture 20:15The future Ed hopes to have a voice in 25:20Self awareness 31:30The infographics 39:00Falling prey to external validation from AI 46:20World Digital Governance 51:15Potential problems people should be thinking about with AI 59:30Jepson’s view on AI and ethics 68:50“If you think of all discovery as just art and it’s just this giant jigsaw puzzle with the X that you were trying to solve, then maybe that’s what it is. It’s like solving a jigsaw, but solving a jigsaw presumes that you sort of know what you’re trying to get to and you have an intuitive, or some sort of higher sense of the outcome. The question is, does AI have that awareness or that sense of an outcome? Where does that sense come from? They say it comes from intuition, from something else. People who are spiritual will say it’s your higher self, you’re connected to something in the Universe, it depends on whether you’re purely Darwinian, spiritual, or somewhere in the middle.” 37:24 -
Today Jepson talks to a good friend of his, Scott Paul, who has done a lot of great things and created various businesses, his first being a drone business in 2008 after he realized how useful these would be in a time when helicopters were more often used, but very costly. He spent all his money on this little startup and hiring an employee, but it quickly failed, which was rough, but it was a good first lesson in entrepreneurship. He immediately went from there to the next thing, creating another business and selling it, and then worked with Disney.
His first startup 2:30Scott’s first exit 10:05Acquisitions have changed 15:00ChatGPT and unlimited information 24:45Linkedin and getting blacklisted 29:00Finding consistent happiness 38:35Religion and diversity 48:30Knowing truth 55:25Grief 60:00
“It’s never on my mind to ‘Oh I gotta go to work’ or ‘I gotta put in hours for this person.’ and it hasn’t been for 12 years, and that gives me a little bit of freedom to ask ‘What do I want to achieve? What do I want to do? Work on? Accomplish?’ I will not ever give that up. I will be out here in a TP zenned out before I ever go back. I will keep that time freedom ‘til my dying day.” 7:26 -
Amy D. Grubb, Ph.D., is an internationally acclaimed leadership expert and speaker, currently advising the FBI on digital transformation. With 20+ years of experience, she has implemented change initiatives, advised C-suite leaders, and received awards for her contributions. Dr. Grubb is known for her expertise in organizational culture, performance, and coaching. Jepson and Amy discuss storytelling and the importance of using this tool to connect with audiences and gain the attention of those to whom you’re speaking. Presenting new technology can at times be somewhat bland or boring unless you get people’s emotions involved by conveying a relatable story.
New tech and how to make it known 3:05Storytelling 6:30Making the hero’s journey exciting from the start 11:45Understanding your audience 25:50Her experience with 9-11 27:05Advanced storytelling 35:35Being more vulnerable and not regretting it 45:45Criticism of her earlier talks 48:15Convincing people to change 50:50
“When I talk to, say for example, law enforcement personnel, I use different analogies and different language than if I am talking to aviators and using different analogies than I would do if I’m talking to financial people, or physicians. There’s a different language, there’s a different cadence to it, but it has to have meaning for them and it has to be real for them. It’s the same stuff, it’s just speaking a different language and I think that’s how you engage people.” 26:30 -
Today Jepson talks with Caroline Rowland who is the founder of Egoli Media, an AI platform which enables creators to manage, repurpose, and store their digital content at low cost but with highly accurate search and distribution capabilities. They discuss Caroline’s companies and the journey she has taken to create these businesses that she now runs and continues to grow, and then the lessons and skills she’s learned along the way. Being a CEO can be a very lonely and difficult path, but a very rewarding one as you establish these unique relationships in this position.
Caroline’s beginnings 3:45Culture and going into a new country 13:30Founding her tech company 16:45How long it’s been around 31:15Becoming comfortable with having a sales conversation 41:20GTP-4 47:00Organizing the material 56:00Positives and negatives of being a CEO 1:02:40Knowing the buyer 1:19:00Startups and resources 1:34:40Women are treated differently 1:42:15
“One of the episodes was about Nadia Comăneci, the gymnast, and we couldn’t find it. We went into the database that the IOC have of their entire history of video, and we kept searching for her. Couldn’t find her. We got one clip, and in the end some smart person on the team said they would look for athletes she competed against and see if there’s footage of her. We found 76 different spellings of her name.” 57:46
Twitter:@ccrowland68 -
In this episode, Jepson interviews Briana Cavion, who describes herself as a student of life and focuses much of her work on supporting individuals who are interested in initiating a spiritual journey who want to understand the relationship between this finite moment and our infinite selves. Her focus is to help people who have reached certain levels of success that are seen as success in the eyes of the corporate, nationalist, modern environment, but still feel a vast sense of emptiness that they haven’t been able to negotiate or understand. “Your life, once you’ve initiated this spiritual path, will always be hungry for something deeper, and no amount of external failure or success will fill that hunger…all beings are one being and our joy is found when we are working for the highest good for all.”
A spiritual famine and external validation 4:20How to show vulnerability and be a leader 9:00Utilizing vulnerability as a superpower 20:10Neurolinguistics 25:00Seeking that “edge” 32:40Briana’s legacy 39:20DMT, or dimethyltryptamine 50:00Gaining trust first for ayahuasca 58:25Tips for your first trip 68:15Stack ranking psychedelics 81:25This life is the trip 92:30What’s going on that we don’t understand 107:15Choosing to sit in Hell 123:30AI and psychedelics 131:10
“Most the time I get people who the 3 year old, who never got attention from their father, is still trying to get attention by working 80 hour weeks. What if we revamped your schedule, delegated these 6 tasks, reduced your work week down to 60 hours, which is still a ridiculous amount of time, but reduced it down so that you weren’t on the brink of a breakdown, so you could actually get some sleep. Most execs that I know need to sleep more.” 10:36
www.theearthtemple.com
@the.earth.temple -
In this episode Jepson interviews his sister, Jenny Taylor, who has worked as a molecular biologist and a wildland firefighter, and at several jobs that land in between wearing a lab coat and wielding a chainsaw. She got her online start during Covid when all the schools shut down and there was a big spike in demand for online educational content. Jenny then went on and created an amazing resource of online science courses for kids that parents can use to educate their children. She explains one of the secrets to keeping kids engaged, such as creating a mystery, and then solving it, and then we talk about the importance of passion that teachers need to have in order to really gain a reputation and get kids really excited about learning.
Jenny’s journey and becoming Science Mom 1:00Making science fun 9:00Scaling the classroom 12:20Initial frustrations 14:15Kickstarter campaign 18:00What she would do differently 21:45Who this resonates with 23:45Artificial intelligence and adapting in education 25:20The problem with standardized testing 29:00Keeping kids engaged 31:00The importance of continuing to learn 38:35Regrets about TikTok 48:20Some takeaways and themes she’s learned 50:10Chat GPT 54:10Her legacy 56:35Living life in suburbia vs being more adventurous 64:40“If you’re so concerned about your job security being tied to a test or a multiple choice assessment, I don’t know how you’re gonna teach a child passion around a topic” “Yeah I really think we’d be better off if we just got rid of standardized testing, especially in the K-5 classrooms.” 29:17
https://science.mom/
@the.science.mom
www.facebook.com/TheScienceMom/ -
In this episode Jepson has a conversation with David “Gonzo” Gonzalez discussing topics such as “What is a good life?” and “Looking forward to the future without fear.” David dealt with a lot of social anxiety early on in their partnership, which made big events and social gatherings difficult, but he was eventually able to get past these fears and we talk about what he was able to do in order to get through it. We discussed the importance of art and creativity in maintaining purpose and meaning in one’s life, and then what David’s experience was with the acquisition of our company.
What is a good life? 3:15Social anxiety 8:30When things started turning around 11:05A funny lesson we learned 22:55Hiring a celebrity salesperson 29:15Being there for family 39:50Each individual human has in their capacity enormous ability 48:10Going on an artistic path 54:15The acquisition event 55:10Working through Covid 67:30
“I had never scratched the surface of the deepest fear of my life. It was that fear that this brain chemistry and whatever it is that I am holds within it the seeds of my own demise. That I will tear down, destroy, and hurt all that is good in my life. That was my deep fear.” 44:38 -
Ben had the opportunity to speak with Sol Rashidi, a very accomplished entrepreneur and leader in the business world. Sol is the Chief Analytics Officer at The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. She has eight patents issued, 21 filed, and received CAO of the Year 2021, 50 Most Powerful Women in Tech, #4 in Top 20 CDOs award, 2020 & 2021 list of Global Data Power Women, and Top 100 Innovators in Data & Analytics. We discuss her various accomplishments in business and how incorporating artificial intelligence has changed or influenced company structures.
Getting started in sports 1:00Change management and organization 10:30AI will create bandwidth and capacity 19:40Managing mental health and self worth 25:00Balancing your time between life and business 33:30“I had tremendous resistance from the team because I was disrupting what they knew was their life for the past 15-20 years, and I wasn’t popular for a really long time. I was amongst the executives. I wasn’t amongst the team because I fundamentally disrupted their lives and their way of working, and their 9:30-4:30 checkouts, and they were very comfortable in that arena.” 24:06 -
In this episode, Ben Taylor interviews Jon Krohn, Chief Data Scientist at the machine learning company Nebula. Jon is a bestselling author of the book “Deep Learning Illustrated” and host of the podcast SuperDataScience. He has an Udemy course with over 100,000 students and his YouTube channel was recognized with the 2021 Data Community Content Creator Award for the AI/ML category. Ben and Jon discuss the ins and outs of artificial intelligence and the importance of taking risks in various aspects of life.
Jon’s book 4:30Who you know and what you know 15:30The world is changing with Chat GPT 23:20The hard things that keep Jon up at night 26:35Challenges, failure, risk, and leveling up 36:15Appropriate fraction of high risk work 43:10Dealing with feedback and criticism 50:50360 reviews 61:40“We were doing cleans this morning at the gym and you had to do one clean every 2 minutes for 20 minutes, so 10 reps. You start off with really light weights that everyone can do, but as you get to the 8th, 9th, 10th, people are pushing themselves. And great athletes in the gym, coaches in the gym, when they get to that 9th set, that 10th set, they’re getting to weights that they fail at and they miss the clean.” 37:55
www.jonkrohn.com -
Kumesh Aroomoogan, the co-founder and CEO of Accern, joins Jepson Taylor on this soulcast to discuss the unique dynamic between co-founders. Similarly to a marriage, co-founders should make sure they want to spend a long time together before they jump into a business. Kumesh has joined the ranks of Forbes 30 Under 30 for Enterprise Technology and is a major contributor to Forbes AI for Finance. They also discuss healthy ways to manage stress and dive into the gritty details of what a dedicated entrepreneur is willing to do to save their company. "So for a lot of the executives, we want them to learn together with us and so every new milestone and every new success, they should be involved because they're part of the company. They're helping the company grow...We don't keep it a secret and I think transparency within the leadership team is super critical."
Working as an accountant 3:00Picking a co-founder 13:10Early struggles 18:35Managing stress and running out of money 25:35What Accern has become 33:00Does the current AI hype help? 36:25Being strategic 39:10How to hire good leaders 42:00Managing your own time 46:25Meditating 48:50If Kumesh wasn’t doing a startup 52:33His super power 53:40Hiring the right sales profiles based on the stage you’re at 62:40Equity and stock options 65:00Ego 67:50How to prioritize 69:35The vision 72:35Sentiment 75:25His legacy 77:40Chat GPT-4 85:45Cold showers 89:30What keeps them from selling 92:20“How do you pick a co-founder? Because it’s like getting married.” “It’s all about the personality and making sure that you can work together with this person. I would say skills and technical abilities and all that stuff, that’s there, sure, but it’s, can you be good friends with this person? Can you have a friendship? That’s kind of how you should choose a co-founder because at the end of the day you’re gonna be spending 5-10 years with that person, so you wanna make sure that you can have a friendship with that person, above skills and above a lot of things.” 13:15
accern.com -
What drives you? Meet Chris Lynch, CEO of AtScale, Founding Investor of DataRobot, and driver of cloud transformation. Jepson speaks with Chris to learn more about what drives him to be a leadership and investing giant, as well as what it takes to find balance at home amid such working chaos. Chris tells us about his past ventures, the struggles he encountered along the way, and how his "no-nonsense" approach actually works for hiring family members - something many business leaders fear greatly. One story in particular opened his eyes to his unhealthy work/life balance and has since been able to find harmony between home and the desk. This is an interview you don't want to miss! "There's nothing that I've done that hasn't failed one or two or sometimes three times. Startups are experiments. Experiments by definition, if you're not failing, you're not making real progress because you smart people, competent people learn from failure. They don't reject it and it's a trade of successful people and entrepreneurs."
Learning business through paper route as a young boy 1:15How will can influence your DNA 6:20Common failure points or mistakes founders make 9:00Large startups that fail 13:00The hard decisions 26:00The elevator pitch and data stacks 40:20Customer Data Platform (CDP) 46:30Failure 56:35Things Chris hopes for his kids 1:00:20Investing in and betting on the person 1:05:50The ego journey 1:12:20Keeping talent in the Bay Area 1:39:40“In most instances when you terminate somebody and you’re clear about it, and you’re supportive of them transitioning to something that’s a better fit, you’ve done them a favor. Because I’ve been around for 38 years, I have people that I’ve fired years ago that will contact me randomly, they see something I’ve posted on LinkedIn, and thank me for doing that.” 28:22
https://www.reverbadvisors.com/
https://www.atscale.com/ -
Welcome to the Atomic Soul Podcast, hosted by Benjamin “Jepson” Taylor. Join our adventurous host as he digs deep into his life and tells us the story of how he became an entrepreneur. He's a key player in today's AI innovation and has some incredible ideas to drive the future of technology. He encourages everyone to always have 5 big ideas that are always on the mind because eventually, one of them will grow legs and crawl out of your brain and turn into a project. Jepson tells of the dark side of being an entrepreneur including some major life events he experienced along the way. From a huge company acquisition to abandoning all hope on an airplane, this CEO's been through it all. “If you’re normal, please be curious. If you’re curious, please be passionate. If you’re passionate, please be obsessed.”
Starting at the end 1:30Mount Superior 4:30Deciding whether to continue school or follow his idea 12:00We are products of our experience 16:00Working at Higher View 24:25Zeff.ai and learning from bad experiences 29:00“I’m walking on the beach, I’m watching the sun rise in Mexico, and it was amazing. I’m all by myself and not a lot of people wake up early at these resorts, and I remember thinking to myself ‘If my startup fails, my life is still worth living.’” 37:22
Twitter:@bentaylordata
