A Global Entrepreneur On Building Through Relationships

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It's Divas the Care Radio.
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Stories, strategies, and ideas to inspire positive change.
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Welcome to Divas that Care, a network of women committed to making our world a better place for everyone.
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This is a global movement for women, by women engaged in a collaborative effort to create a better world for future generations.
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To find out more about the movement, visit divasletcare.com after the show.
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Right now, though, stay tuned for another jolt of inspiration.
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Well, hello everyone, and welcome back to the Divas That Care.
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My name is Candice Gish.
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If this is your very first time tuning into the Divas, a huge welcome.
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We have been doing this now for 16 years.
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We're listening to over 34 countries around the world, and it's because of all of our amazing guests, our tribe, our hosts, everybody that's been a part of this with us.
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And we're so excited for everybody that tunes in.
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You know, it's always really important for us to share our short our stories because we never know who it's going to impact.
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So I hope that you share this well with your friends and family also.
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Today I am very excited to be introducing to our family an amazing man.
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His name is Michael Vadella.
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And Michael is gonna be so wonderful on our podcast today.
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But I just want to share a little bit about what this show is gonna be about today.
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We're actually working on a mini-series.
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It's called Collaboration Over Competition.
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So this empowering series what explores what becomes possible when women or men stop competing against one another and start building together.
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We're shifting the focus from comparison and competition to connection, shared purpose and collective success.
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Because when we support one another, we celebrate each other's achievements and share that we're our knowledge and resources.
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Everyone has the opportunity to grow through honest conversations, inspiring stories, and practical insights, we'll discover how collaboration creates stronger relationships, opens doors to new possibilities.
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And multiple and actually it multiplies the impact we can make in our communities and beyond.
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From celebrating one another's success, building meaningful partnerships, we'll explore how a spirit of generosity and teamwork can transform the way we approach life, business, and leadership.
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Welcome to the podcast, Michael.
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Thank you.
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Thank you for having me.
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Oh, Michael, I'm very excited to actually get to know you.
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Michael, one of the things I always ask our guests when they first come on is if you could introduce yourself to all of us today.
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Okay.
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My name is Michael Cudilla.
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Um, I've served uh 30 years in the US military and then 21 years in the civilian world, where I've owned and operate currently 11 companies that are operating globally.
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Well, that's awesome.
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Michael, and currently you I'm talking to you from Canada, but you are actually in Egypt.
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I am.
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It's the uh I guess where you'd say civilization started, or maybe quasi started, but yeah, I am.
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I'm I'm living in Cairo, Egypt.
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That's awesome.
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Why did you decide to go there?
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Wow.
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Uh from an opportunity perspective, Egypt has the largest manpower and it sits central into the Middle East and Africa.
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Uh, I've always felt that this region has tremendous opportunity for companies and not only that for socialism, tribalism, uh, and community enhancement.
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Um, and so I chose this because I really wanted to put together my beliefs and then carry through work and uh collaboration.
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I love that.
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You know, and we're all about collaboration here.
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So, Michael, tell me a little bit about your business because you said you have you operating 11 businesses.
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So let's share if you don't mind sharing with our listeners exactly what you do.
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Wow.
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Um, it first started in risk and security uh when I uh exited out of the US military in 2006.
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Um from that, it got into transportation, secure transportation, then it got into logistics, um, manpower, healthcare, technology, logistics, uh, and then actually helping companies create opportunities into new markets where there is, I would say maybe fear, uh, but also not knowing what is or how to operate in certain countries.
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Um, so that's pretty much the short of it.
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Michael, you're probably gonna confuse a lot of our listeners today because a lot of the the ladies that listen to our podcast might not understand what you're talking about here.
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Um, because you do a you you're basically you're out there, you're helping people um with their businesses through technology.
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I I would say technology and and also relationships.
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At the end of the day, if somebody needs help or wants to collaborate, it's it's a relationship that creates that opportunity versus technology.
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So it's a hybrid, let's just say that.
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It's a hybrid.
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I love that.
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And you work mostly, well, obviously you're a global company, is that correct?
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Correct.
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Wonderful.
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So most of the work is Latin America, North America.
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It's actually like I said, it's global.
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I have local companies and I have global companies.
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Okay.
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So what type of companies do you like working with then?
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From Fortune 500s to startups to new ventures.
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Um, I I think the opportunity that I like is building relationships and and helping that dream come to reality.
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Dealing with the Fortune 500, it's not so much that way.
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It's more compliance, it's more uh opportunistic in that country or nation.
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But dealing with smaller entities or dealing with entrepreneurs or dealing with small businesses, it's about collaboration.
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The fruit of the uh of success is to see them blossom and to see that they've taken the advice or the knowledge to help them become better people as well as better business owners.
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Okay, I like that.
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So you would consider yourself kind of for our listeners, like kind of like a a coach of some sort.
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Yeah, I you know, that's a very interesting uh point.
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Uh I would say probably more of a servant leader.
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I like helping.
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I like to make experiences and opportunities.
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I like to serve.
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Uh, I have a saying in my company that nobody actually works for me, I work for them.
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Um, it's it's about giving and it's about supporting, because at the end, that's what leadership is about, right?
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It is about the collaboration and bringing people together.
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It's just like having a family, helping my daughter through her education and her family uh as she develops.
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Uh, I mean, that's what we're really here in the world to do.
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You know what?
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I can agree.
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You know, it's so important to have collaboration and working together.
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So, in a lot of ways, you're helping, you know, individuals collaborate with other individuals in order to make their business successful.
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Correct, because then we get into culturalisms and then we get into religion, and we get into social issues of how people negotiate or how people see other people, and we get into race, creed, however you want to uh categorize it.
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There's biases and there's opinions of it.
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So if I could bridge that gap uh and make that client successful, or make that individual successful, or support that individual, why not?
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I like that.
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I I've wrote I was reading some of your articles um that you post on your website about AI.
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Um, could you talk a little bit about that today, if that's possible?
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You know, it's something that's really out there in the media, um, but a lot of people don't know a lot about it.
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And I was wondering if you could share with us about that.
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Yeah, most of the information that we see currently in in the media is about one is how AI is so uncontrollable or fearful, and I disagree with that.
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I also believe it's a marketing ploy because they want to be able to demonstrate, you know, listen, I can control this, I'm the one who built it, but I just wanted to give you a bit of fear.
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Fear is also, I would say, something that intimidates people but also binds people, albeit good or bad.
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It depends on how you look at it.
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AI is not like any other tool, but it is like any other tool, meaning that it's a productive tool to help people uh in daily tasks for life.
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And we use it and we have a development team that I have a father who's 86 years old, my father has dementia, uh, my father doesn't remember things, but we created an AI agent, for lack of a better word, for my father that sits on his wrist and on a phone that helps him understand he needs to take a medicine.
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Or if he asks a question, it will be able to respond because we built uh responses and uh abilities to help him navigate his daily life.
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So it is a tool, if it's used right, with a human in the interface to be able to provide better life.
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And right now, the biggest issue in society is healthcare.
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And so we need tools to do that.
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We don't need tools to make things quicker or faster.
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We need tools to take care of people, to support people, to help people.
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That's wonderful.
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You know, it's not something that we hear about a lot.
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Um, we always a lot of people hear about the negatives or they hear about the quick uses of things, but we're thinking about the long-term possibilities of what it can do to really help people.
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Correct, because it doesn't sell, it doesn't have sizzle.
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Um, healthcare is the number one concern globally.
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Most people would say it's not.
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Uh, we have a large aging population, but we have a very fast-growing youth population too in certain countries.
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It's also an educational tool.
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And so when I, okay, so I'm 65, so I just dated myself, you know, things were different.
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Uh, you know, uh growing up, we had to, we didn't have calculators, you know, we had compasses or we had other things.
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Um, as society progressed, tools were enabled to support, but it didn't help people with either learning curve problems or or people who have visual problems.
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AI can help that.
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So not only healthcare, but it's also education.
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But again, as I would say, that a human has to be at the center of everything because AI can be manipulated and AI will collect what's out there versus what is being controlled.
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Okay, I understand that.
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Um, and how do you think that we could use this type of a technology to support one another?
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How is this going to uh basically uplift women in business, for example?
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I I think it's a great tool for women.
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I think it's a great tool for for anybody, but I think that most populations understand genders.
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And the problem with genders is some people still have maybe some archaic views about genders.
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I think women in general have more empathy.
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Uh I think women in general have more discipline.
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Um the factor from a female perspective, and I'll just say from my wife, my wife's a lawyer, um, she has a very strong personality, and that can come across sometimes aggressive to males or other people, but it it is something that she's had to learn and cultivate to develop her business.
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And so AI tool brings that empathetic approach, that response, it helps you formulate a sentence or formulate a tone.
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Uh, but it's also a tool where a family or even myself can not have to work so much harder, but can work smarter.
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So the tool could be doing work where I spend more time with my family, or any gender can spend more time with the family.
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That's what the tool is for.
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To free you up, to be able to spend more time on you, but also to spend more time in a one-to-one ratio with each other.
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I like that because a lot of us entrepreneurs are very multi-casts.
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We do a lot of things.
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We try to always be that person for everybody.
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And I think having ways to simplify our lives or to help us out so we can still continue to be with our family, our friends, you know, do our hobbies, spend time with ourselves, you know, having something else to support us, I think is always a benefit also.
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Correct.
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And I think that's what the tool is there for.
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It it is for other other capabilities, but again, we tend to look at attention, media grabbing uh data points, and we need to look at how it how tools can make our life better.
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And that's where I think the mark is being missed by media or social media.
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I'm more interested, and and I think society is getting to that point.
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How do we take care of each other and how do we help each other?
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You know what?
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I love that.
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I love the ability, and I really appreciate you talking about the medical and and health, because I think that is a big concern from you know, just an aspect, you know, here in Canada, we have serious issues here.
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Uh, and I think you're right, it is a global, a global concern.
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Uh, you know, but all we ever hear about is how it takes away creativity for people.
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And I think that it in a way it may take over some things, but if an artist is trying to create something, they're still going to create it.
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You know, there there is a distinction between AI and the artist.
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And just like with an author writing books, there is a distinction, there is a voice, and I don't think that will ever take that over.
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Correct.
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And you can say the same thing about pharma.
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Pharma doesn't want holistic medicine.
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They would rather manufacture and control the revenue and the royalty.
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So you're exactly spot on right.
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AI gives the ability and gives freedom.
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And I think what we as a society need to understand is that we need to take our freedom back and we need to use tools that can give us that freedom to bring back the family values, to bring back the ability that we don't have to be politically correct to have a conversation, that we should be able to have empathy, but have open dialogue.
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Exactly.
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You know, that's what we're all about in the Diva Zet care.
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We want that conversation to take place because we never know what's going to transpire from things.
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And I think there has to be a good balance because technology is here.
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We need to understand it, we need to be able to work with it, and we need to balance it with what we already have that we've been using.
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It's fear, but yeah, there is a lot of fear, isn't there?
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I I hear it all the time, you know, just listening to people's conversations.
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There's a lot of fear, there's a lot of uncertainty, and we have to find ways to uh take away or eliminate some of the fear, but have a better understanding, I think.
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Yeah, I I think from an entrepreneur side, fear is what is the catalyst that helps us be creative.
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You know, we chose to start a business because we were tired of something or we wanted control of our life.
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In order to be successful as an entrepreneur, fear plays a big part.
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But how do you take that fear and harness it into power?
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It's the same with my background in the military.
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You know, we're going into combat.
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How do you encapsulate that fear?
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How do you turn it into sound and honest viewpoints, but also carry on the task and the mission?
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Fear is a crippling effect, but fear is a useful tool if you understand how to harness it.
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I love that analogy, and it is so truthful.
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I love that.
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It is something that has pushed me farther and farther within my career.
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And I love that.
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I love hearing when people talk about that.
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Michael, how can our listeners get a hold of you?
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How can they go check out your blog?
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But how can they connect with you?
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Do you have any social media links that they can check out?
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Um I'm not really big on social media.
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Uh I'm on LinkedIn.
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Um, and then my emails, uh, which is definitely out there, but I'm usually on LinkedIn.
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I I try not to be on social media.
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So sorry about that.
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No, that's okay.
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Um, would do you want to share your website then with them?
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Sure.
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Uh it's www.michaelpayano, p-a-y-a-n-o.com, or it's L thrayaholdings.com.
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Thank you so much.
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Michael, one last thing I always ask our amazing guests is if they could give any tips or tools or advice that would help them through the day.
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Believe in yourself.
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If things go wrong, do what I do.
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I get up in the morning and I look in the mirror and I say, what are you going to accomplish today?
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At the end of the day, it is us who can make things happen.
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So believe in yourself.
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I love that.
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Thank you so much, Michael.
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Thank you for being my guest today.
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I would really like to have you back on.
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I have a feeling that you and I could have some pretty cool conversations about some other topics.
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Thank you.
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I look forward to it.
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And I enjoyed this.
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Thank you for your time as well.
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Oh, thank you so much.
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And to all of our amazing listeners, thank you so much for tuning in and checking out Michael today.
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I'm going to be posting Michael's website on our Facebook and on our all of our social media just so that you can go and check him out.
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It's actually, there's some pretty good articles here on his website.
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And I think you would like to be, I think a lot of you would like to read them.
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And I also want to say thank you to all of our first-time listeners for checking out the Divas I Care.
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Um, please check out all of our past shows.
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We've got some amazing topics out there, things that really resonate with people.
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And I know that you're gonna love all of our amazing past guests, all of our amazing past hosts.
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You know, there's just so much out there.
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And check out all the remaining shows on this mini-series, Collaboration Over Competition.
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And one last thing, I want you to remember to do something kind for people today.
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The world needs a little bit more kindness, and it's up to you to start the ripple effect.
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So until next time, everyone, take care.
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Thanks for listening.
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This show was brought to you by Divas Lithcare.
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