Host: Phil Howard

Well, everyone in the world, I would like to introduce you to Benny Zhang. I did pronounce that correct, right? You never know.

Guest: Benny Zhang

Yes, sir.

Host: Phil Howard

So welcome to Dice Popularity Nerds, Benny. We had such a really fun conversation last time. I’m really hoping that I can do it justice this time. But why don’t we just start with give us your story, man. How’d you get into IT? How’d you get started? What was your first computer? How are you changing the world or making a difference in the world right now?

Guest: Benny Zhang

So my first computer was a Commodore 64. My dad was a visiting scholar for Cornell University. When he came back to China, he actually bought me a Commodore 64. So that was the computer I played video games and also learned how to code.

Host: Phil Howard

Okay, so let me get this straight. Dad came back from the United States with a Commodore 64 box as a gift. Correct?

Guest: Benny Zhang

Yes.

Host: Phil Howard

That has got to be one of the most pivotal, most memorable moments in your life. I mean, that’s probably one of the coolest things a dad could ever do.

Guest: Benny Zhang

Actually, it was pretty complicated at the time because it took him a while to figure out how to put it together, and then took me a while to learn how to use that properly. I think just about the same time, I also read a book called Silicon Valley Fever. So it talks about the early days of Intel, HP, how they got started, and eventually a long story about how Apple got started. So both those events are my catalyst for me to get into IT.

Host: Phil Howard

Okay. So Silicon Valley Fever, how old were you when you got that? I can’t remember my age. Do you know how they say you should never compare yourself to other people? That’s a lie. We all compare ourselves to other people. I want to know because I was wasted. If I knew what I knew now, I wouldn’t have wasted so many years. But that’s how life goes. So Silicon Valley Fever, I haven’t read it. I need to read it. What’s the general thesis and rundown of the book?

Guest: Benny Zhang

So basically it talks about how the Silicon Valley entire IT industry started through the Stanford University’s lend-lease program and also Stanford’s commitment to entrepreneurship. So that’s the theme of that. And there are a lot of stories about John Shockley. He’s the inventor of the transistor. Back then, the transistor is the size of a football or something. So it’s pretty amazing. Now we can pack, what, three or four billion into a small chip no bigger than a small waffle. So yeah, that’s truly amazing.

Host: Phil Howard

And that led you to say I have to be in IT.

Guest: Benny Zhang

I think that’s the thing. IT didn’t exist back then, though.

Host: Phil Howard

Yeah. Go ahead.

Guest: Benny Zhang

That didn’t exist back then, but that was my inspiration to get into technology. What you guys typically don’t know is that in China, when you graduate from high school, we as children don’t have a say what major we want to study or what career paths we want to take. Our parents typically dictate and say, “Okay, you got to study this, because your score is good.” And also it’s a good profession, you got a good job. So the topic of passion never actually came up. It’s all about, hey, you can have a good job and then probably lead to a decent life. That was it. So I actually been pushed or guided by my parents to study chemical engineering. But my passion always lie with IT. So then I studied in China, then eventually in Canada for many years. Then I went to work as a chemical engineer. But I was always the IT contact for the company. Because we have multiple sites, I’m one of the contact in one of the sites. Then one, I think during a one month period of time, all of the company’s IT people, back then were like eight of them, they all quit.

Host: Phil Howard

So the company was left with nobody.

Guest: Benny Zhang

So I raised my hand and said, “Hey, maybe I can do the job.” Then I was actually still very grateful they actually let me try it.

Host: Phil Howard

That story is so common. It’s, I was working at the cafeteria, but I knew a lot about computers, and they’d have me fix the printers every now and then. And now I’m the CTO. That’s the extreme answer, but it’s right. Okay. So that’s awesome. Now, the China thing fascinates me. It’s actually got to be very useful for you now. I’m assuming you speak. What do you speak? Mandarin?

Guest: Benny Zhang

Yeah, I speak Mandarin and English.

Host: Phil Howard

So that has to be really, really helpful. I don’t know if you’ve ever worked in a company where you had manufacturing in mainland China or Hong Kong or something, but it’s got to be very, very useful. I’m just guessing. Does it come up ever?

Guest: Benny Zhang

Not actually, not really, because I spend most of my time in Canada and the US, so it actually never came up.

Host: Phil Howard

Maybe I should have explored. I’ve run into, you know, we’ve had global shows before where the CTO is like, I got to travel to Hong Kong and China, and it’s like the different language barriers always comes up and time zones is another thing. But okay, really cool. So that’s awesome. Back then IT was a cost center. It’s arguable that it is still a cost center. But I think with the changing of the guards AI, which there’s this massive frenzy which I, after talking with a lot of people, I would say it’s most definitely a bubble, with tons of money being invested into it and not enough money coming out of it yet. But I would say we’re definitely moving away from the cost center piece. What’s your experience with IT as a business enabler?

Guest: Benny Zhang

I’ll give you a story. Unfortunately, even today, a lot of C-levels that IT typically reports to still consider IT as a cost center. So their goal when you have dealing with a cost center, then our goal would be, hey, how can I cut the cost? So I’ll tell you a story. I was hired for this new company, I won’t name the name, obviously. Then they were introducing me to each department, then our accounting department actually telling me how they are doing this major analysis project. Taking, I don’t know, tens of thousands of wells, then analyze the data from those wells. And the data is somewhat structured and somewhat unstructured. So it’s an overwhelming amount of data, the budget, I think it was five million dollars. Then they plan to finish that in about a year and a half. So they hired a pretty sizable consulting company to do the work. So I talked to them, and I also looked at the data and I thought, okay, I think I have a way to do this better. So I called up a developer I knew before. Then we get together with the business and study their data for a little bit. So they’re doing this whole manual work. They have a team of accountants and a team of analysts plus the consultants. So they’re doing them manually, well by well, then open the Excel sheets and CSV files and then pulling data out of those. So after we study the data, we decided and proposed a combination of a little bit of AI, a little bit of programming and logic. We did it with forty thousand dollars and within three months the project was done.

Host: Phil Howard

So just imagine the amount of money we saved, amount of time we saved for the company. They were just shocked how this even remotely possible. This is a really great AI use case. Now to get to the heart of the matter. It’s not that you probably didn’t have the ability to do that. A lot of people listening to this show right now would not have the ability to do that, even if they had to tinker around and figure stuff out. Most of the people are very curious about how things work, and I would say that most of the people that listen to this show could figure this out. However, what they might not have is that bridge of communication to how you would even know that that is going on to begin with. So maybe dig in a little bit more as to what even got you into the circle of trust, so to speak, so that you would even be allowed to play around with that, let alone have the time. Because a lot of people are putting out fires all the time, because the majority of these mid-market IT leaders, manufacturing IT leaders are kind of overwhelmed in the overwhelm zone of putting out fires all the time. So how did you have time to do that to begin with? How did you build those connections to even get in there, to even be able to show your stuff?

Guest: Benny Zhang

So I think there are a couple of things to remember here. I remember my old days when I first started my Microsoft Certified professional engineer. Then the very first class, I didn’t know anything about Microsoft products back then. Then the instructor came in and he asked the first question to say, “Who here thinks you’re going to work with computers?” So obviously, all of us raise our hand. We said, “Okay, of course I’m an introvert. I want to work with computers so I don’t have to deal with humans.” So the instructor said, “You guys are wrong. Behind each computer is a human being.” So that sentence struck me and also stuck with me for a very long time. What I get to understand is IT’s not just a black box. You have to go across the aisle and shake hands with other people. You have to interact with other people and listen to their complaints and sometimes criticism and understand their pain, then gain their trust. Otherwise you’re not going to be able to get those projects. They won’t even tell you. Or if they have an idea they’re just going to go out and do their own things. I think that’s a very fundamental thing in the IT professionals, is to understand behind each computer is a human being.

Host: Phil Howard

And I think also, we’ve gotten to the point in history where most people will agree with that. Whether they do it or not is or do it well is a whole another question. I think there’s a lot of what I’ve noticed after talking with so many IT leaders for years now, is that there’s the general complaint or the general grumbling is that IT isn’t heard enough or we’re there, we have a seat at the executive round table. We know our KPIs, but there’s this fine line that can be drawn between are we really a valuable seat at this table or are we just a necessary entity. In other words, we need to bring all the ERP systems together, or we need to upgrade this. And when everything is broken, we love IT. Can you make sure we don’t get hacked, please. And everyone knows that’s probably one of the number one things that keeps IT guys up at night. Because it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when and how bad it’s going to be. And I think that IT leadership often might not feel respected enough. And on the flip side, on the CEO side or the CFO side, I think that they’re saying IT’s not hardened enough or they don’t really understand maybe the business drivers, they’re kind of a secondary support piece to the business drivers. And I think there’s a level that IT might actually have to take on. Even though they have too much work, might be stressed out and putting out fires enough. I don’t even know if it’s at the level of the stress that maybe a CEO is even handling, because I think they have to drive dollars and cents. And I think a new CTO could emerge that’s willing to put a number on their head. That’s like, I will drive revenue, not just understand it and not be a cost center and be a support structure. But I’ll actually take it to the next, not just ROI, where I’m making sure that we’re as efficient as possible and there’s a return on investment and all that, but I’m actually willing to put a number on my head to help drive revenue. I don’t know if I’m asking too much, but I think that that’s where the gap is, is maybe they don’t really understand the stress that the CEO is under. They’re more complaining about the fact that the CEO is not giving them the respect that they deserve, or it’s a mix between the two. And there has to be this way of understanding. Does that make any sense to you?

Guest: Benny Zhang

It does. So I would argue respect has to be earned and nobody just comes out deserving respect. So if you think about it, you’re asking other people to invest in you. In the executive table, that’s what happens. We as IT leaders would ask the business to say, “Hey, put the money in me.” Then why would they do that without seeing values out of our department? They wouldn’t. Nobody would. I mean, you wouldn’t. I wouldn’t put the money on the table to say, “Hey, go do the thing,” without even seeing the value. So it is truly upon us, I wouldn’t say not just IT leaders, the entire IT team to demonstrate our values consistently, to earn our respect before they can give us our respect.

Host: Phil Howard

How can we do that? Can we be even specific? Is there something that we can give out to the audience that is next level, next level beyond ROI? Or do you have any suggestions or it’s just how you do it or how have you? I mean, you had this amazing case study with the AI and how much was the consulting going to cost? I mean, you did it for forty thousand. How much was the consulting going to cost?

Guest: Benny Zhang

I think the total budget, roughly about five million. So the vast majority of it goes to the consultant.

Host: Phil Howard

And that consultant actually pretty funny because he talks so slow, because every hour is or every minute for him it’s a lot. Yeah. It’s so super slow. I hate that. I’m so I need things fast. I really am a fast guy. Like even when I’m coaching my kids. Does it need to take that long to empty the trash? But I should have the kids on some day, and we should dissect me. Okay, so he talks really slow. He’s still got paid the five million?

Guest: Benny Zhang

No, no, because we fired him within a month or so. Because once the business see they can get it done so quickly, they immediately fire them. So they hate me, obviously. Losing that much revenue to them is a huge deal.

Host: Phil Howard

Did they get paid anything? They probably got paid more than you got paid. They got paid more than your entire project cost. Okay. So what was the windfall after that? What was the talk after that? Were you like, “Hey, CFO, you know. Hey, John, what do you think, man? Pretty cool.”

Guest: Benny Zhang

So that actually opens the door, because I was a brand new manager in the company. The head of IT. But that opens the door to a lot of new projects flowing into IT. So they would ask us to do things. So they ask us to do another thing is consolidate because we collect, because we’re an oil and gas company, so we collect a tremendous amount of data. You can imagine how much data there is. It’s a gigabyte per second kind of data. So they asked us to collect those data and analyze and put it into a proper database so their analysts can come in and do their analysis. And that was a major endeavor. Because before they were relying on contractors providing that information, which you can understand, there’s a major cost when you do that. So like I said we have to earn the respect from the business before we can actually even ask for anything. Start with something small. Then once they see we can make an impact, then they are more willing to work with us.

Host: Phil Howard

You had a really great analogy. It was probably one of the best analogies of all time. Not that this analogy hasn’t been used before, but I felt like it was the best implementation of said analogy. And I think it was the car mechanic analogy. How can we use that?

Guest: Benny Zhang

So I always argue, the way I define IT is we have two missions. First is to protect the company. That’s very easy to understand. The second is to empower the business. That point means we in IT need to help the business not only just gain a competitive edge, we want to be so far ahead of our competitors, it’s going to take them years to catch up. But how are we going to do that? We have to change our mindset because a lot of our IT people’s mindset is still in this car mechanic’s mindset. Oh, here’s a car that breaks down. So I fix it. I fix it really quickly, then customer’s happy. In reality, the customers are not happy if their car breaks down very often. They’re not going to be happy.

Host: Phil Howard

So one of the things I asked, actually, when I hire a service desk manager, I always ask them the question to say, “Hey, does having more service tickets means better or worse?” The answer is closing them down. Yeah, I closed them all. You did a good job.

Guest: Benny Zhang

But pretty soon somebody’s going to want a different car. So until we change that mindset then we cannot demonstrate the value to the business because they keep fixing the car is not valuable to the business. They want a car that’s reliable and fast and a sports car or, I don’t know, one that can’t be…

Host: Phil Howard

So okay, one that can’t be broken into or if it’s stolen can be tracked and traced. And I mean, it goes on and on and on. So. It sounds simple. We’ve had this conversation before. It sounds really simple, but there is a fine difference there. Because, yeah, I do believe that most people are dealing with antiquated silos, fixing broken… what do we got? We know that I would say fifty percent of the people listening to this call probably have an IBM AS/400 sitting somewhere in the business running something. Not that that’s a bad thing. That’s probably a good thing for IBM. But how can we fine tune that? What would be the next step? How can we fine tune the IT department to take it to the next level? Should we be surveying the C-levels? Should we be, you know, whether you’re remote or in-house, what kind of questions should we be asking? What kind of steps should we be taking to further and continuing along with the car mechanic analogy?

Guest: Benny Zhang

So the way I always advocate is changing this whole IT black box into a human being. Remember, like I said, behind each computer is a human being, and behind each IT computer is a human being as well. So for example, the practice we typically use is, we don’t use the service desk account to send out interactions with users. We send it out from our personal account. So you will see an email coming from me like say Benny says something instead of from service desk. The point is to changing this black box of service desk to each individual’s. So that way we have individual connection with a lot of users, all the users actually. Then for me, at the leadership level, I have never shied away from any speaking events. Actually, I volunteer to speak in many events, in our leadership training events, in our board meetings, in any kind of public speaking possibility. Put myself in front of the employees, then talking to them. Then there’s another way I think it’s probably the most effective way is doing regular lunch and learns. So IT will organize an event with HR help. Then we do that monthly for all the users. From my own experience, that’s the most impactful thing we can do. Not on the part we teach people how to use technology, or we’re sharing some information about security, stuff like that. Not about that. It’s about introducing IT to a lot of people and open people’s eyes to see more opportunities. Then the users will come to us for new stuff.

Guest: Benny Zhang

I’ll give you one good example. So we did this ChatGPT, how to use the generative AI to help our work. Then I got a call from this VP to say, “Hey, in our business, we have to read more than one thousand page long specification document. But we only need probably twenty things out of those thousand pages. Is there a way you can help me to read this quickly? Because right now I have to spend two people three days to read through a thousand pages and extract the information we need so we can put together a proposal for the customer.” And this happens over and over again, because there’s a lot of activities then if we can help them save time. And we did it through an AI tool to extract the information they want.

Host: Phil Howard

That’s a huge, huge thing for them. This was they had to read trade journals or what was it specifically again?

Guest: Benny Zhang

It’s a specification. It tells you how to do.

Host: Phil Howard

Spec doc. On some tool or equipment or something.

Guest: Benny Zhang

Typically on a project.

Host: Phil Howard

You’ve given us two beautiful AI use cases on one podcast. This is great. But all of them led to human interaction, which should give people a clue that AI is a human assist. It is not a replacement of a human.

Guest: Benny Zhang

That’s right. I think you can euthanize as much as you possible, but in reality it will displace a lot of jobs. There’s a major saying: AI won’t replace people, but people using AI will. So for us, we must learn the skills, otherwise we will be left behind. And the pace of changing actually is dramatically increased. In the old days, you talk about the Moore’s Law, that’s about eighteen to twenty-four months. But now we’re talking about six to seven months is a generation. So we must stay, I think using Steve Jobs words, stay hungry, stay foolish.

Host: Phil Howard

I don’t know where to go from here. There’s so many questions I want to ask you. Pick one. Hold the Steve Jobs thing. I want us to give back something, almost like a mini infographic. Something that we can build for the people because everyone’s like, okay, great lunch and learn, I’m going to go do it. Well, you’ve done a bunch of them. So why don’t we ask you, what is the step-by-step process to delivering a good lunch and learn and speaking to the humanoids that we’ve hidden in the server room forever to not talk to. But what is the best way or what’s a… I mean, I think that how to use generative AI or ChatGPT to do work better is a great one. That’s the first one that people love. That’s going to lead down the rabbit hole of, well, how do you make sure people don’t leak company data and do all kinds of other stupid stuff using it? And I beg the question on that one. So why don’t we just start with how to lead a lunch and learn on X topic? Let’s just use how to use AI to do your work better. I think it was a great one without breaking all security protocols and I don’t know, something like that.

Guest: Benny Zhang

Sure. The centerpiece or the center theme should be, I think we all need to understand every time we do any kind of presentation, it’s actually we’re providing entertainment. So it’s extremely important we make that entertaining for the audience. So I always suggest we make it very interactive with users. Then you can ask questions or you can ask them to ask questions, or you can have them participate with us. So for generative AI, a typical tactic would say “Hey what topic do you want to ask the chatbot?” or “What do you want to do?” Then have them participate. So remember it needs to be entertaining. If it’s not entertaining or it’s just full of IT jargons, then nobody can understand. It’s useless.

Host: Phil Howard

It’s the little things. It’s the small little things that make a massive difference between successful and unsuccessful. And I think we’ve probably talked numerous times about how to give public presentations and how not to be nervous and how to do all these things, but you’ve just summed it all up in one word: entertaining. How do we be entertaining? Okay, so interacting with the Q&A participation, what do you want to do? If you were to do an outline right now for this lunch and learn, how would you outline it? How long would it be? What would we start with? What would we eat? Would it be a roundtable? Is it a group of lined up of chairs with a presentation up at the front? Where do you do it? What’s the best format?

Guest: Benny Zhang

So it depends on the company. If you’re small enough, obviously in-person will be most ideal. I’m allergic to pizza sandwiches or hamburgers. Unless it’s a lobster sandwich, then I’m all for it. So you can organize that through HR or some other admin function who will handle the food. And surprisingly, once you have food on the table, more people will show up. Then some other companies will have to do, during the Covid period, for example, I had to do those lunch and learns remotely. So we did quite a few lunch and learns remotely. And it’s also a different trick you have to apply to keep people entertained and also engaged. When you do things remotely, one of the things we would ask is everybody has to have their camera on. Then you have to ask a question. If you don’t, we’ll ask you a question. To keep them engaged. Then I personally like this way is to say “Hey I have a quiz at the end. So make sure you pay attention.” And sometimes I want to say “Yeah this topic is going to be on the quiz. Make sure you remember that.” So keep their attention up all the time. Then obviously I don’t have a quiz for them. Sometimes I do have a recap, but not truly a quiz per se. That’s some of my tricks I use. So if it’s our presentation always contains at least a couple of videos, then a few interactive questions or interactive games we play with users, real life examples. For example, if you talk about generative AI, the best way is to tell people, “Okay, here are a few interesting use of AI.” So give you one example. This lady, she’s using ChatGPT, she told ChatGPT to pretend to be her overbearing and always criticizing mother-in-law. So she can practice how to interact with her real mother-in-law with ChatGPT.

Host: Phil Howard

So this is a really caring person. This person must really care. She must, she really loves her husband, I can tell you that much.

Guest: Benny Zhang

The way of using ChatGPT. It’s very entertaining as well when you tell that to people.

Host: Phil Howard

That’s awesome. Did it give her some good feedback? That, I don’t know, seems very helpful because…

Guest: Benny Zhang

Because if you tell ChatGPT to be mean, it can be pretty mean. Wow.

Host: Phil Howard

I’ve never thought of that. These are all great things. What else should we do with ChatGPT? Now I’m just going down the ChatGPT hole. What’s your biggest secret to using AI right now?

Guest: Benny Zhang

Coaching end users. The huge thing I have to tell everybody is that AI does hallucinate. That’s a huge problem. I get to a point is I don’t trust anything it tells me nowadays. I have to confirm that with a couple different AIs. Now they all pretty much similar or have the same difference. Then sometimes that can’t even be trusted. Then you have to verify that. So I think that’s a huge thing, especially come to work. You do not just produce whatever AI tells you and present that as the truth, because very often there’s hallucinations. I think that’s a huge warning. I think you also mentioned the privacy thing or the data security is a huge deal. People just dump whatever on ChatGPT without even thinking about it. “Okay, when I put this contract in ChatGPT, it would become a public document.” Then for a publicly traded company, sometimes it can be a huge problem. For example, you disclose a client information that’s in violation of a non-disclosure agreement. So these two things is something truly to be careful of. So what can we do? Education. So we actually have this, I had this discussion multiple times with the C-level executive. Because you probably know this as well in some major companies, they just flat out block all the AI tools, because I can do that in my security tool in two clicks. Block them all. Then I had this argument to say, “Okay, you got to think about the AI tool is no different from a Google. It is a new way we do Google now.” Now with Google do you block Google then? Obviously. Okay, nobody actually blocks Google. But why would you block a new tool then this is going to be better than Google. And frankly, I’m using AI tools way more than Google nowadays. Surprising to me because I grew up with Google, played with Google for many years.

Host: Phil Howard

It’s just kind of annoying now that Google is like, why would I go use Google unless I’m looking for a restaurant’s phone number?

Guest: Benny Zhang

Correct. Surprising to say that I may need to adjust my stock portfolio based on that comment. So that’s a really hard conversation with the CEOs. And also especially the chief compliance officer because he’s very or she very often concerned with data leak. And then I said the best way we can handle this is through education. Educate our users and achieve two goals. One is you can we can have the data compliance issue resolve. Second, the more they know how to use AI we will become more efficient. It’s a huge benefit to our company. So I had this conversation with many CEOs.

Host: Phil Howard

Now do you track? Do you track what they’re doing on AI, like their prompts and how they’re using it?

Guest: Benny Zhang

Oh, we don’t honestly.

Host: Phil Howard

Because when you get to a certain size it becomes very difficult. Obviously we have companies sponsored ChatGPT accounts, we have our team accounts. Then we also use Copilot quite a bit. And there’s quite a few other AI tools we use. We have one that’s being sponsored by the podcast. I’m just going to plug it anyways. But we’ve got a Devs AI dashboard that plugs in really all of the major LLMs and a bunch that I don’t even know. It’s all in one dashboard. So when you’re building different bots or projects, you can say, “Okay, I want you to use Claude. I want you to use OpenAI. I want you to use Gemini on this one.” And I want you to use these different. Now, from an administrative standpoint, it can go in and see all the inquiries and everything that all their end users have done from one dashboard. So I was just thinking off the top of my head, someone could probably write a pretty good long prompt that incorporates your AI usage policy. And it could probably flag things just for an education standpoint, when an end user is kind of pushing the line a little bit and you could probably give a reminder. I’m sure there’s probably something already out there or some security product has got to be building this somewhere. But I would think that could be something that could be built pretty quickly, almost like a training or security kind of usage policy.

Guest: Benny Zhang

I think that’s a great idea.

Host: Phil Howard

This is what we do on this show. So we’ve got that. We’ve got the dashboard that plugs it all in. I think it’s thirty dollars a user. If anyone’s interested, I’ll put it in the chat of the episode or something like that. But I think for just… Hello. I think I lost you. This is what happens when you’re in a stream and you click off for a second in the same window. There you go. Classic. Okay, so back to where we were. What can we actually monitor here? Well, we won’t go through that right now. Just take my word for it, people. You can do it. I will take a look.

Guest: Benny Zhang

Yeah, I’ll take a look.

Host: Phil Howard

So back to this beautiful AI uses. I had so many things that we wanted to talk about today. We went through the zero trust you apply to something like AI. It’s got to be difficult.

Guest: Benny Zhang

It is, yeah, it is very difficult. One good thing about the generative AI, at least for the time being, it doesn’t connect to our environment just yet, but it could be potentially like Copilot could potentially a major leap. Because typically we have more trust in Copilot than any other AI tools. And then if we are connecting our internal data with an external AI, then it becomes a huge, huge problem. So yeah, those major companies can be hacked and there is a much bigger target than all of us.

Host: Phil Howard

Can we have a data warehouse, separate kind of off the grid with a poster own, you know, open source version of some generative AI or some LLMs or something like that? I mean, it seems like a lot of work to do for, I mean, it’s going to make sense when it comes to a single source of truth and wanting salespeople to be able to data dip into the company database or something in that standpoint, I think it would be useful. But is there anything that you’ve thought about there?

Guest: Benny Zhang

Actually do. Most companies I’m aware of actually all using the similar model like that. If they have a data warehouse built, and they also have specific AI data warehouses for AI training, all of that. So most companies actually do that. I think the concern it still comes down to the leaking of the data, because sometimes the actual data itself is more valuable. So for example, if a publicly traded company like their financial information got leaked, there’s tons of money to be made on that information and they become a major criminal investigation if somebody got hold of that, unauthorized people got a hold of that.

Host: Phil Howard

That’s another deep, long hole that we could go down.

Guest: Benny Zhang

But I think that the way I foresee at least is we’re going to have those large language models in-house, and we’re going to start training our own AI. And that’s actually a lot of companies already start doing that. Then instead of relying on external AI system like ChatGPT, because they have their API you can pipe into, instead of doing that, we already start using our own, training our own AI. A lot of companies do that. And I think that’s our way to counter the data leak, because once it’s under our control, it has a lot less possibility to leak the data.

Host: Phil Howard

Do you have a good process for doing that that you can share?

Guest: Benny Zhang

I can’t share that.

Host: Phil Howard

I didn’t think so. Classified information. That’s okay. But yeah, it’s good to know you can do it.

Guest: Benny Zhang

I’m not saying let’s… I’m saying like a lot of companies have been doing that already. Some have been doing that for years at this point. So it’s actually a trend the way I foresee is AI is going to become AI everywhere. From each department is going to have their own AI agents or tool trained up. Then even our each individual may have our own AI tools.

Host: Phil Howard

This is, I know we’re running out of time. This has been a great conversation. We didn’t even get to coaching and developing IT talent, which is something that you’re very, very…

Guest: Benny Zhang

That’s my favorite.

Host: Phil Howard

Yeah. I mean, I know you want to give us the quick rundown. We got five minutes. Let’s go.

Guest: Benny Zhang

Let’s do coaching and development IT talent in five minutes. So the first thing I always talk about when I talk about coaching is what is your passion? Tell me your passion. So there’s one person I interviewed asked, “Hey, what’s your passion?” And he said that data analysis. He’s applying for a system analyst job. Then I said, “Okay, can you show me how that works?” Then he pulled up this whole dashboard he developed on his own to analyze all his fantasy football game, every player’s statistics and all the fancy charts he used to analyze those things. He it immediately tells me it is his passion. He is passionate about data. He’s passionate about analyzing those data and getting results. So the first thing I always talk to people when I talk to people is okay, what is your passion? When you know what your passion is, then you can quickly grow up and become probably one of the best people in the field.

Host: Phil Howard

Okay. And then obviously, sometimes we’re passionate about things that don’t fit into the job role correctly. So how do you get the right people in the right seat on the bus, so to speak? I mean, how do you know when you don’t have the right person? So we find out what they’re passionate about.

Guest: Benny Zhang

Sometimes it’s hard to find a fit. Sometimes it is. So I personally always want people who are passionate about IT to join the team. The second question I typically ask during the interview process is, “Are you an A player? Are you a top performer?” Then everybody says they’re a top performer, obviously. Then the follow up question is, “Okay, what are the tangible metrics you have to substantiate that claim?” So then vast majority of people will fumble. So I said, “Okay, if you ask Lionel Messi, he’s a major soccer player, what his metrics are. He will tell you he scored more than a thousand goals in his career by now.”

Host: Phil Howard

He’d probably tell you what his hundred meter dash is. He’d probably tell you exactly what his weight was in January of this year. He would tell you all kinds of different things. I love it. I love it because I tell my guys all the time, I say, “If you’re not keeping score, how do we even know who’s winning the game?” If you are not, and if you don’t get on the field of play? What if we’re always practicing? Correct. Love it. You sure you don’t want to be in sales?

Guest: Benny Zhang

I’m an introvert. So I’m an introvert that likes doing lunch and learns. And I realize that I have to talk to people.

Host: Phil Howard

But do you know, there’s a whole group of introverted salespeople that are some of the most successful salespeople in the world. Most people think introverts can’t be in sales, but that’s not true.

Guest: Benny Zhang

Yeah. So here’s a trick. I always use this to my advantage. When human interact, the one who talks the most is actually liked least. So the more you talk or the more we talk, the less we will be liked and the less we will be heard. So as introverts, we should use that to our advantage. Then we tend to listen more and people tend to like us when we listen more. I’m not saying just sit there and listen. But it’s more active listening, asking questions when it is appropriate. Do let the people tell you their story before you interrupt them.

Host: Phil Howard

You have given us so many gems. I am so thankful for you being on the show. I know you’ve got to go. I know you’ve got a meeting coming up here. I would love to ask you to even just do a lunch and learn for our private community, if you’re willing to do that. If you ever have time, if you want to do that, I’m offering that invitation to you.

Guest: Benny Zhang

Sure.

Host: Phil Howard

And I think it would be very, very, very useful. Very thankful. And we’ll continue to be in touch. Thank you so much for being on Dissecting Popularity. I appreciate everyone. Have a great day.