[ 00:00:00,000 ]Let’s go!

 

[ 00:00:20,570 ]Welcome into Behind the Brand Podcast. I’m your host, Adam Hayes, with Hayes Group Marketing, hayesgroupmarketing. com. To my right is my co-host, Bob Payden, with BPG Group, bobpayden. com. To my left is Sundaresh with ANSA Solutions. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Good finally having you on. Yeah. It’s been like two years. Try it more, man. Yeah, Bob said, ‘Hey, you don’t know Sundaresh? Yeah. I got to get him in here. You got to meet him. Yeah. What better way than to do it through podcast, right? Yeah. So tell us about you, what’s your background, you know, what the evolution and how you ended up here at ANSA Solutions. Well, it’s a long story. So I have done all kinds of things, right? So I started my career in sales.

 

[ 00:01:08,050 ]Then I went into manufacturing. I used to make garments. And exported to the U. S. So what kind of garments? Shirts. Okay. Yeah. Well, there’s a long, long time ago. This is my shirt. I don’t even know this part. So I’m discovering. Then I went into teaching computers. I did that for a few years. But then I came to the U. S., I did programming. And then so I was with a company called ADP. Some of you may know it as a payroll company. But when I joined ADP, ADP had five divisions. Apparel, claims processing, dealer services, brokerage, and one more. So I was in the dealer services division. So we did. Soup to nuts. If you had enough money, you want to start a car dealership, ADP will take care of everything except the car.

 

[ 00:01:56,970 ]Really so the financing and all that stuff— or not the money, okay? Yeah, just set up right the software, phone systems, printers, and all that. So I was with ADP for 15 years. I moved all over the country with ADP. So I started in Portland, Oregon. I went to Texas, went to Wisconsin, Florida. And then finally ended up back in Texas before I left ADP. In 2012, so I joined in 2000. No, sorry— 1998 is when I joined EDP. It left in 2012. He moved to Indianapolis, joined the Primo. Uh, that after I joined, turned out it was not a good fit for both of us. So we chose to park ways on Make-A-Way. And then I started my franchise. Selling oil, vinegar, and spices. Okay.

 

[ 00:02:51,090 ]Did that for three years at the Hamilton Town Centre. I’m sure. Yeah. That part I know. I remember hearing this. That time also, so I was at the, I had a, I was working on NGS on Anthem. My wife was running the store. Then I quit NGS and we shut down the store at the same time. And that’s the same time, literally the same day. The same month. And then I joined Kinney Group. To run the professional services. For the Splunk practice, did that for a few years. And I went back to government contracting. And then in January, with the whole you know, executive orders. Changing government. Efficiency. I was given an option to either relocate to Baltimore or to the Baltimore area, D. C., Virginia. I chose not to do that.

 

[ 00:03:52,900 ]Yeah. So I decided to start on my own. It sounds like you put a whole bunch of stuff in a blender. Right. So what if I got to blend it? So what was kind of the theme, you know, that you’ve had all these different experiences, but there’s some kind of theme there that’s kind of interweaved to kind of make you who you are. Yeah, I think the team has evolved over time, right? Eventually, I think what I’ve come to realization is I just like to solve problems with technology. Any problem, I like to solve with technology. And that’s what I did. That is what is common across many of the past. Yep. careers that I’ve had. And so this is a perfect fit, right? So there’s a.

 

[ 00:04:36,510 ]great i partnered with this company called workado they place based out of california and They have an amazing platform. It helps. companies streamline the operations automate the operations basically decouple growth from overhead. So you can go much faster than adding ad count or any other kind of overhead. Yeah, they came in three weeks ago, four weeks ago, and did a workshop. And they got to walk through it. And we all walked away like, ‘Wow.’ I mean, the kind of the downsized versions of Zapier, Zapier, whatever you want to call it, right? That’s kind of the simple. Yeah, that’s a poor man’s work hard. Yeah. So, if you’re a larger enterprise that has multiple systems, yeah, uh, literally, they were doing things on the fly, demonstrating it live as we were just sitting there.

 

[ 00:05:30,630 ]Right, so it’s not— it’s very uh, I would call it at that level, user friendly. Uh, they’ve taken all the you know, the hard crap that nobody wants to do and made that simple. And so, is it— is it geared towards automation? Okay, and how do you point it towards the problems of your specific business? How do you make it apply, because every business has a little bit unique so you know, challenges and problems. Yeah, so how do you point or focus the the laser at a particular problem in a particular business for that? So, workado is a platform, right? So, you have to, for every implementation, every client you have to tailor it for the clients. Okay, right. So, the platform has, has been designed, you know, I think it’s been designed really, really smartly, right.

 

[ 00:06:18,310 ]So there are several layers. First, the most important layer is the foundation. Which is, there are about 12, 000 different systems that have connectors, but the platform has connectors to over 12, 000 systems. Okay. So, if you have a business and you’re using Orange Average, a mid-sized business, that mid-size is like 200 employees, and they have about 67 systems. Right. And they don’t talk, but they don’t even know. They don’t necessarily talk to each other. Right. Many times, you know, uh, only the CFO knows how many systems they have. Right. He’s paying the subscription because he’s paying the subscription, right? So, Workato probably already has a connector to those systems. And when I say connectors, it means two things. One is it knows how to talk.

 

[ 00:07:02,930 ]Uh, to the system, but it also knows how to execute transactions in the system. Right. This is a transaction that is specific to the system. So, if you take Salesforce for example, it’s because a very common platform, almost everybody has it, right? Or it feels like it. You have to enter a lead. You have to enter a prospect. You have to update the lead. You have to update the prospect. You have to move it from one state to another state. Workout knows how to do all those things, right? Workout knows how to instruct Salesforce. To provide the information to create a lead and everything right—so, similarly, Workado knows how to talk to let’s say your email system.

 

[ 00:07:40,160 ]So in a very simple example, you can receive an email from a prospect that says, ‘Hey, I’m interested in your product.’ Today, what you’ll do is you’ll pull up your email, copy all that information. Basically right— and I mean most people will copy and paste the absolute bare minimum. Yes, email just so they can hit save. Right. No one cares to spend the time to fill in all the address. While with Workado, Workado can automatically monitor your email and it sees, oh, Adam Hayes has sent me an email. It says, ‘Okay, it’ll extract the data. Transform it to whatever formats Salesforce wants it in and it’ll fill in the data now if you want to get it more sophisticated. Right, work hard again.

 

[ 00:08:24,770 ]Talk to some LLM like Chat GPT, then say, ‘Hey, Adam Hayes is interested. Tell me a little more about Adam Hayes. Chat GPT will give the history of Adam Hayes and take that information add it into Salesforce. So now you have a full-blown lead with a lot of information. It’s already been researched, already been researched. So without you doing anything, it’s all curated now. In Salesforce.’ In Salesforce or whatever CRM system you’re using. It doesn’t have to be Salesforce. But, like Salesforce, for instance, if that business is using Salesforce, then the system will you know digest all the API so it knows what all the interface is that’s correct and what all the custom fields are and all that’s correct. Okay, that’s correct. So that’s the foundation layer. Right.

 

[ 00:09:09,110 ]So that’s so you can do that with 12, 000 such systems, like Salesforce, Oracle, SAP, NetSuite, most large enterprises use these systems. On top of that, now, once you have these integrations, it can do RPA that is robotic process automation. Robotic process automation is a very common practice. There’s a tool that’s available, UI path is probably one of the front runners in RPA, which can communicate between user interfaces. Right. So there’s a UI you pull in data from here. There’s another UI, like a website you want to go to, some websites, scrape out information, and paste it in Salesforce. Right. That’s robotic process automation. Right. So today, companies have tools for RPA, tools for API, a separate tool for data layer orchestration, there’s separate tools for you know data management.

 

[ 00:10:03,270 ]So they still have to manually now they have four additional tools to you know make these 67 tools. Talk to each other so 67 becomes 71. Whereas the workout is one platform, it can do all four and more. Right, right. So this is the second layer. So you have all these connectors to the 12, 000 different systems. Now you can use those connections to communicate either through the UI or API or directly to the database. Then, on top of that, now they have an agentic layer. So now you can write your own agents, autonomous agents. Which will use one of these tools, if needed, to connect to the systems to perform whatever function you want to perform. But now I can see across your entire organization, because it’s not siloed information.

 

[ 00:10:52,120 ]Okay. And it’s more proactive than reactive, right? It is. Very correct does it make suggestions? Does it sit back and watch and make suggestions? Hey, like we’ve observed for 30 days here’s some agents that might help you. Yeah, so I was at the in Vegas I was for the conference right so they had their annual conference in Vegas this past week. So Workado uses these. They call them genies. They don’t call them agents. They work harder, using genies to run their business right. So it’s not only something that they are offering to people; they’re eating their dog food and they demoed that live at on stage. Uh, obviously, they had hiccups like the Wi-Fi didn’t disconnect and all that. But they showed, in real time, what happened.

 

[ 00:11:37,985 ]It was not, it was not, a PowerPoint presentation; it was not a pre-recorded presentation. They showed real time what happened. I mean, they showed a few genies. They showed a CPQ one, which I thought was very cool, right? What’s that acronym? The coding process, right? Once you get a request from a customer, he’ll go talk to your SAP. He’ll talk to your NetSuite. He’ll talk to whatever, whatever, whatever. Get in all the information. He’ll go talk to the government website, get the latest tariff. and then it’ll create a code for you. without you lifting a finger. It’ll just automatically do all that. It’ll give you a code. Adam, do you like this code? Yes. Send it to the customer. Boom. Yes. It’ll go to the customer. You don’t like it.

 

[ 00:12:16,070 ]Make edits. Hit send. Right. So what would have taken you 45 to 15 minutes? well organized enterprise takes you less than five minutes. to create a quote, right? So anyway, so that was that was cool. They had other genies. The most the one that I thought was most impressive is a licensed genie because this is a very common problem in midsize mids and large size organization. Right? They have 67 systems. Nobody knows finance guys paying the bills. So many times, what happens is they’ll create an account for Bob. Bob doesn’t really use it, right? One day, Bob throws his hissy fit saying, ‘I need an account.’ So they create an account for Bob, but Bob doesn’t use it. Right.

 

[ 00:12:58,690 ]But they’re paying for Bob every month, every month, $ 10, $ 10, $10, you know, 16 years, that adds up a lot of money. Right, so this genie, the way they demonstrate it, is there is this dashboard. You once you log into work it shows up. This shows this dashboard and all these charts. One of the charts was, ‘Hey, you are not using, you’re not making any edits to Salesforce, you don’t need uh. You don’t need this level of user ID. You just need a free account. Right. Do you want me to change your access level? Sure. She says, ‘Yes, sure. Go for it. Boom. Change. Oh, I also noticed you’re doing something else. You know, you have the wrong level of access. There. I can take that out.

 

[ 00:13:41,270 ]Boom, done. Right. It’s an enterprise level of rocket mortgages. Rocket Mortgages. Rocket Mortgage. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it’s that same, but yeah, I’ll call it an enterprise level. Exactly. And then it says, ‘Oh, you’re sending a lot of emails. And I see you make a lot of spelling mistakes. You want to subscribe to Grammarly. Right. Yes. and then it’s done. Says okay. After all these changes, you’re going to save 700 a month. So it’s the primary lens of focus for this particular company, is it? Midsize and larger businesses? Or is it small business as well? Because mid-sized and larger businesses will definitely benefit the most because they have significantly more opportunities for improvement. Sure. But small businesses can benefit from it too, right? Right.

 

[ 00:14:26,830 ]There’s no nothing that’s The way I see it, the benefit for these two sizes is different. For a midsize and large companies, they can start with a large company, you start with using the platform like this to you know. Sit for savings, right? You reduce costs in many ways and then you streamline processes, right? So that’s where you start, and then eventually you can use it to grow and so on and so forth. But a mid-sized company that—they’re typically in the hockey stick, right? They’re moving so fast, things just fall off. And this helps them bring it all together and keep it all together. It helps everybody move together, right? Because everything is connected now. Everybody’s communicating. Everybody knows what’s going on.

 

[ 00:15:09,910 ]For a small-sized business, this is extremely helpful to help them become a mid-sized business without the size of the business, headcount of a mid-sized business. That usually happens through headcount growth. Usually happens through headcount, right? You hire, you know, 75 people. Now you’re a complete disarray. Then you struggle, yeah, and then you scale back, then you start letting go, people, and then you come back to becoming a small size business, yeah. This allows you to prevent that whole disarray part, right? Because now you can stay organized, you can have these agents or genies help you do a lot of the things that you otherwise have to hire three people to do, right? And then it helps you grow, right? So you can focus on growth, you can focus on what you are really good at.

 

[ 00:15:53,540 ]And then, you know, have these genies do it. You know, I’d like to explain these genies. Is, you know, have you ever worked in a company where you wished you could clone Bob? Yeah. Yeah. Because anytime you need something, Bob’s the only guy who knows. Bob’s not even in that department, right? Bob’s moved on seven layers, but he’s the only one who knows how to do this. A genie is a clonopon. Yeah. Only better. 24-7. 24-7. Well, they don’t complain. No comments, reviews. No complaining. They don’t get all this. They don’t go out and golf. They don’t go out and golf. That’s right. They don’t make fun of you and your golfing. Yeah, but they don’t have a spot. We can program it too. We’ve noticed your golf game scores.

 

[ 00:16:41,510 ]So talk about what some of the struggles are with getting organizations to see the benefit and make the adoption. Yeah, change. I mean, everybody’s hesitant. But you were talking even this morning about, I’ll call it just the normal barrier. If I remember right. Just, I mean, every time you go into a business, no matter big or small, there’s always hesitancy. There’s always hesitancy, right? The way I process that is, you know, everybody’s afraid of change. Right. And everybody’s afraid of losing control. Yeah. Right. They see this AI as— it’s going to take up your control, which is how the space odyssey, right? Exactly how the space odyssey, right? So, but that is so far from the truth it’s not even funny. Right. AI has been in existence since 1956.

 

[ 00:17:34,889 ]1956, think about that. And it hasn’t taken over anything. It has only helped people take over more things. So that’s what these platforms will do. That’s what these genies will do. It will help you grow without worrying about overhead. It will make you so much better. Is there some, you know, I guess the thing that comes to my mind, is there some resistance that may be there where, you know, when you’re considering evaluating any software product, you’re like, ‘What am I missing?’ What am I not asking that I should be asking, that maybe I’ll miss and making this, you know, something like this and bringing this into the organization. How are you thinking through that right now? Yeah, so that’s a very good point, right? So I relate that back to change.

 

[ 00:18:23,170 ]People are hesitant to make change. Excuse not to make it. Because they think it’s going to eliminate their job. It’s going to eliminate their job, or they’re going to be held accountable for something that is completely out of their control. Workado has already thought about this, right? You don’t have to rely on me. Uh, that’s so one. Um, one is they have this what is called as a gears framework. It’s a very robust, very comprehensive framework that helps you adopt this platform and implement, you know, genies and adopt AI within your organization without disrupting any of what you’re already doing. It will only improve what you’re already doing. Right? So I mean, I can talk for three, four hours on the Geras framework, so I’ll just mention that for now.

 

[ 00:19:09,060 ]But the more important thing is, through this conference, they had brought in quite a few customers. And, of course, I met a lot of customers just walking around. And there was one thing that is very common. And I have been to many such conferences, right? When I was a Splunk, I used to go to a Splunk conference. And I’ve never come across a common theme across all customers. Everybody has a different story on how they become successful. Here, everybody has the same, one same thing, and that is just get started. Everybody just said, just get started. Start with something really small. Self-feeding. It’s self-feeding. It’s addictive. Right once you start, you’re like, ‘Oh, how can we do more? How can we do more? Yeah, right.’ So they were an example of Lucid Motors.

 

[ 00:19:51,090 ]Right, it’s not a small company— very large company. They’ve been using Mercado for many years. Zendesk. Very large company. They’re using Mercado for many years, right? So there are many, many very large companies. There’s banks that are using Mercado, right? They say, ‘Oh my gosh, what happens to security and all that?’ No, there’s a bank that is using Mercado. Ahem. And banks have very, you know, rigid security requirements. Right. I know there’s a very large company, I won’t name them, that’s using for treasury transactions. And so, security has been designed with security first. So the cool thing about WorkHarder is the founders used to work for TIBCO. TIBCO is one of the first integration platforms. Very long, long, long time ago. So these founders used to work for TIBCO.

 

[ 00:20:42,540 ]So they’ve learned, they know how to, what is needed. They’ve learned from that. And then of course they’ve had other careers. So they’ve learned more and they’ve taken all that learning and incorporated into this platform. I have seen many platforms, right? And I think this platform is a game changer. It’s got long legs. It’s going to go very far. What do you think the lowest-hanging fruit is? Let’s just say small to medium. They’re in that middle zone, right? Maybe not quite big, but yeah. Do you see it, the low-hanging fruit as what I would call more at the exec level and systems and understanding what’s happening with the business— or is it down at the worker B level where I don’t have to look at every email anymore, I mean. So.

 

[ 00:21:31,460 ]I look at it differently, right? So I don’t look at it as a role. You know, is it good for this role, or is it good for this role? I look at it— or the platform— is better suited for which process needs improvement, right? So. DSO. Daily sales outstanding. You familiar with that term? Daily sales outstanding is, you know, when from the time you invoice, when you get the money. Oh, sure. Right. OK. It’s a very common problem in business. And a lot of that is. Order to cash process, right? From the time you place an order, receive the order, to the time you receive the cash. Yes. The more you can compress it, yeah, the better it is, yeah, right. So it’s an executive’s problem. It’s an individual’s problem. Right?

 

[ 00:22:16,370 ]But this is an entire business problem, right? So what I always suggest is think of what is your business? Experiencing what are the frustrations your business is experiencing, it could be—something. You know, I have to call every three days to get my password reset. And because of that, the IT staff is very busy. They’re not able to implement Salesforce. Yeah, whatever it could be. Right, but think of what is it that is affecting your business as a whole, as opposed to what is affecting this individual or this department. Right, and then the platform is capable of doing that for you. Interesting. That’s fascinating. Very fascinating. I mean, I know. How long has Workato been around? 10 plus years. Okay. So in that 10 years’ time, it would be really— they probably have it, I’m sure.

 

[ 00:23:01,380 ]But I mean, it’s literally— they’ve done those implementations over and over again. Yeah. It’d be really interesting if there is a theme. Through all of that, yeah, there probably is. I mean, I mean, because I think about the adoption curve. Right. You got your early adopters. If you get them, great— but you got to get the next bunch. That’s right. Who are those people? That’s right. Is it the 55-year-old that’s got five years to retirement and I’m scared to death? Yeah. Or is it the young people or not, right? I mean, or whatever. It’d just be interesting to know. I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s a pattern. Yeah. I don’t know. There must be. I just don’t know. Like this morning, I was on a call with a company, a small company.

 

[ 00:23:39,260 ]I don’t know. I mean, I think they must be having less than 50 employees. Wow. But they, I mean, this is a this is going to be a game changer. So what what did they describe as what they’re hunting for? So they have a platform that goes and talks to various systems already. Right. And then but they don’t they don’t have this such a robust integration layer or connector system process. So they do it manually. So every implementation is manual. Someone has to go and it’s a painful process. Right. So getting the data out of the systems is again a painful process. So that we started the conversation with that. And then when we demo the platform. The CTO was on the call.

 

[ 00:24:19,260 ]And he said, ‘Wait a minute, I can do this, I can do this, I can do this.’ It just exploded into like so many different ideas, so many ways, so many different problems. You can solve, right? So the Mercado has, in their process, they have the typical initial conversations, discovery. They offer what is called as a work gem. I think this is such a cool concept. Work Jam is where, if you’re a client, you’re interested, but you don’t know if it’s going to fit, solve your problem, right? Like you said, you know. Chain— what else? What else? What else? Yeah, we do this Work Jam for free. We’ll spend a couple of hours with you, with the platform. We’ll sit down with you, we’ll show you how to connect.

 

[ 00:25:00,370 ]You pick what systems you want to connect to. You pick what problem you want to solve. Then we’ll solve it for you. Right? Then and then, right in two hours, just imagine solving a problem in two hours that you’ve noodled on, frustrated by the last two years, two days— even if it took two days. Yeah. At the end of the two hours, whether or not it if you don’t think it’s meets a purpose, that’s fine. That’s shake hands, part ways, move on. Right? But invariably. You’ll recognize, in those two hours, how many other problems you have in a company that can be solved with this platform. This platform is fascinating—I’ve never been so enamored. Let’s talk about the— you know— founding idea behind Ancestor Solutions. How did that come about?

 

[ 00:25:41,050 ]And then how did you get connected with Ricardo? I’ve had ANSA since 2001. I should go out in any kinds of jobs. Okay. Then, after I left, my last job. I tried to find a job, but at that time, in this time frame, at least in 2025, finding a job for someone like me is near impossible. To compound that, I had spent the last five, six years in the DC, Maryland area. I don’t know anybody here. I didn’t even know Bob. Maybe I knew Bob. Right, so I don’t need any box. I met him in a corner. It’s really weird. Right, so seriously. Really? Yeah. It was Nexus Impact Center. We used to work in the co-working space. Yeah, over at Nexus. And I sat down at a desk, and I hear this guy behind me.

 

[ 00:26:31,580 ]Me with the headphones and the speaker on just drilling somebody. I don’t know. It was like, you know, why are you late? What are you doing? It was just on and on. And when he hung up, I kind of turned around and said, ‘That was impressive.’ And then we’ve been friends ever since. So plus he plays golf, so that doesn’t hurt. Uh. Yeah, so after that, so I’ve been solving these types of problems for the government for six, seven years. Right. And I did a lot of this even prior to that and I always gravitate to gravitated towards technology. I tried oil and vinegar and spices; it just didn’t work. I was better at consuming it myself. No, actually, that was a good product. We just didn’t do a good job of promoting it.

 

[ 00:27:16,910 ]Yeah. That’s all right. You know, gravitated towards this. Of course, unfortunately, unfortunately, now I end up spending more time, not more time, all my time, doing sales and business development. Very little technical. Are you enjoying it? I’m loving it. I’m loving every minute of it. It’s just taking me maybe three times longer than someone like you, you know, who’s more proficient, who knows what to do right. For me, everything is a trial and error, which is fine. See, that’s the myth, right? You can’t tell anybody, right? Figure that part out. It always always takes longer, always costs more. Yeah, the learning curve is always 90% yeah, sure, yeah. I’m sure, I’m sure, right? It just takes all it takes. It’s like golf. All it takes is one, one good shot, one good shot, one good client.

 

[ 00:28:04,430 ]Yeah, and that’s what’s been keeping me going. Right. I have this phenomenal conversation. And the rest of the week will be terrible. But that’s the one conversation that sticks in my mind. Okay, yeah, it’s going to happen. I just need to have 10 of those conversations. That’s all I need. Right. Yeah. So things are, i mean, things are looking up. Things are looking promising. I have great. Generally, it’s like Marvin. Others in the ClubWorks networking group. They keep me going, they keep me focused and energized. Yeah, very much. So okay, put your crystal ball on. Hat right. I mean, you know, you know the tech, you know where it’s going, all those kind of things. Five years from now. What’s that going to look like? I mean, I know what it is now.

 

[ 00:28:48,960 ]Yeah. Just, I mean, just the tool itself, how pervasive do you think it will become? it’s going to be, become very perfect. I mean, two years from now, right? Like, in 2027, if you look at same time in 2027. I would say, 60% of the businesses would have adopted some form of AI, or more than one form of AI, right? Right. Anything, anything more than one thing. Anything is now. Yeah, more than one thing. Like, in six, in 2020, by 2020, so this time, in 2027, there’ll be companies very very comfortable. That’s one. The second thing that I’m going to like, I don’t know the time horizon. But if I were to predict in the future, we’ll see less of enterprises and more of startups. Because it’s a lever for them, right?

 

[ 00:29:43,440 ]It’s a huge lever for them. Huge lever. Right? It becomes very easy for somebody to start their own. And use all these nimble and quick, instead of trying to steer a huge ship, much more cost-efficient. Makes the J curve a little more curvy. I mean, it’s just less headcount. Yeah. And I think that’s good for everybody, right? Because now. Like someone who likes me, for example, I’m very good at figuring out integrations. I’m very good at it, right? You tell me what your process is, and I tell you how to make it better. It just comes naturally to me. I’m very good with numbers and I’m very good at data, right? But that’s how it’s always been. Everywhere I’ve been, I’ve always done this. So now I can focus only on those things.

 

[ 00:30:28,670 ]So now you’re benefiting my expertise. Whereas, if I were in a business, if I’m working for someone else, if I’m in a company, in addition to— I don’t know if I’ll be given the opportunity to use my skills in the two or three things that I’m extremely passionate about. Because they’ll want me to do five other things. Right. Gets diffused it gets very quickly diffused right so you don’t get the best of the breed you get a mediocre version of everybody right yes. So I think it’s a good thing. The future looks very, very bright. More and more people are going to become successful. Um, the uh yeah, I think it’s, I think it’s a good thing, it’s a good trend. Awesome. Let’s talk about you.

 

[ 00:31:10,690 ]Yeah, what do you like to do for fun besides play golf? Golf, golf, and golf. I love golf and go. So when you get bored playing, you know, left-handed, you’d start playing right now. I love golf. I mean, if I could, how’d you get into golf? I used to play cricket. Okay. That’s a pretty quick get a loss. Actually, golf is a funny story. So I came to the U. S. That’s a moving ball. Golf’s a steady, you know, static ball, right? Yeah. Um, but both require a lot of hand-eye coordination. Yeah, right. So when I came to the US in 1998, in Portland, Oregon, there’s a buddy of mine, colleague of mine, right? We were talking one day, and he said, ‘I asked him what he wanted to do the weekend.

 

[ 00:31:56,780 ]He said, ‘I want to go golfing. I said, ‘Oh, cool. I want to go golfing.’ So we went to the golf range, and this is the first time I’m playing golf ever, and I hit the ball and it went straight. So he was shocked because he couldn’t do that.’ So we started playing every Friday, we take off from work at one o’clock, play 18 halls. Yeah, because it’s Portland, Oregon, so you can do that only for two weeks in a year. Right. Ball gets lost in the snow. No, it reads all the time! It’s raining all the time. Did you learn to like golf in the rain? So we played quite a bit. We played quite a bit. Then I stopped moving to Houston. Yeah. Took my club to Houston.

 

[ 00:32:38,530 ]In Houston, I couldn’t find a foursome. Right. First problem: so I couldn’t play. Then the occasionally, when somebody says you want to play and go out to play, it is so hot, it is so hot, it is so humid, it is so muggy, and so many bugs. Yeah, I mean, you literally need a protective net to golf. Other than that, it was great. Other than that, it was great. So I didn’t golf much in Houston. The next COVID, my kids, my son comes home. I try to get my kids to play golf. When they were little, believe me, my son was shorter than the golf club. I’ve been trying to convince them to play golf. They just didn’t. We sent him the lesson. He just won. Both of them, right?

 

[ 00:33:17,600 ]They just didn’t. So when COVID happened, all their activities were canceled. Their soccer was canceled. So one day my son comes home and he said, ‘Can I borrow your golf clubs?’ I said, ‘Who are you going to beat up?’ Yeah. He said, ‘No, we are playing golf.’ I said, ‘Oh, cool.’ So I started golfing with my son. Then my daughter watched her. She said, ‘Oh, can I go?’ She’s good, too. Both of them are. Yeah, they’re both very good. My son is better than me. Daughter’s almost as good as me. So we started golfing very, very regularly. Um, so now because I don’t golf as much as I did last year. I strained my back last year. Okay. I’m much better now. Playing golf? Bang off.

 

[ 00:33:59,010 ]Yeah. We were golfing at Eagle Creek. I looked at the temperature. When I booked the tee time, I saw the temperature was 50 degrees. And this guy has made me golf in much colder weather. But what I didn’t think about is looking at the temperature when we teed off. And when we teed off, it was 38 degrees. And when I hit the first ball, I was fine. When I hit the second ball, I heard something. It’s like a tree breaking. Oh, that’s not. And my ball went into the woods. I said, ‘Oh, wow, that must have been a really hard shot.’ The tree broke. But I went—I didn’t realize it was my back— and I continued playing, yeah, through that. I played through, uh, with the back.

 

[ 00:34:38,130 ]And for 18 holes, Leslie played 18 holes with that. And then it just got horribly bad, right? I can stand what was the injury? I have a pinched nerve, which is still pinched. And apparently there is surgery, which is not going to necessarily solve. That’s all you miss all that, but it will cause five other problems. Right. Yeah. I’m just doing physical therapy too. I’m making my back stronger and seeing how much So now I can go. I’ll just take it easy on him. Yeah. It’s good. It’s fun though. It’s worth it. You guys have played a lot of golf. We have. Do you golf? Not well. Oh, give me a break. There are only two kinds of golfers, right? One you see on TV. Yeah. Yes, you don’t. He says that.

 

[ 00:35:27,580 ]He says that. This is probably the closest I’ve come to being on TV. I think I’m the guy. I describe my golf game as I’m the guy you invite when you feel bad about your golf. Yeah, because then you won’t feel so bad about it. Join the club. I took him to the Boone County outing. Was it two years ago? Yeah, and he said the same thing. Literally. You know, goes off and just straight as an arrow. Irises straight as an arrow. What are you talking about? Right? So give me a break. Yeah. That’s not that good. I wish it was. Sometimes you’re actually better when you haven’t played a while. Yeah. Because everything slows down. Most of the time. You don’t think as much, all that kind of thing.

 

[ 00:36:07,570 ]That’s why I have to take a day’s break. That’s why I golf so little, so I always have beginner’s luck. Correct. No, it’s like the guys that play Euchre, you know, you’ve never, first time I ever played Euchre, I ran the table and the guy says, ‘Oh man, I haven’t played Euchre in, I don’t know, 20 years.’ Yeah. Oh, good. Well, he was bluffing, yes, and then they just shellack you right and it’s like and he’s just chuckling the whole time it’s like ‘Yeah,’ same way in golf, oh what’s trump, oh yeah exactly yeah yeah That’s right. Yeah. That’s one game I’ve never played. I have so many cars. That’s a Hoosier thing, I think. A Midwest thing. Yeah, a Midwest thing. I have an outfit at Euchre. Simple.

 

[ 00:36:51,690 ]So are you enjoying Central Indiana being here in Indiana more than 12 years? Yeah, are you still enjoying it? Are you yeah? Is it home now? It is home now, yeah. Okay. Besides, I have two kids here. Yeah. I don’t know. They keep you young. College or not yet? No, they’re both out. They’re both done. Okay. What are they doing? Daughter works at BHI. Okay. Which is BHA or BHI. I was afraid you’d ask. No, it’s all right. Behavioral Health Institute. They are into senior living. They’re all over. They’re 708. They own the GCI or something, right? They have, they have something to do with GCI. Okay. She’s always been a nonprofit. And she loves being a nonprofit. My son did his actuarial science from Purdue. And then he’s working at Humana.

 

[ 00:37:54,570 ]Okay. Gotcha. Yeah. Smart, awesome actuaries. Yeah. I keep telling him that actual science is probably one of the first. industries correct impacted will be impacted by yeah oh really eliminated by yeah yeah it’s all data and data science but the smart statistics and the smarter the smart ones will stay right somebody’s got to tell what to do right how do people reach you how do people reach me? my website is answer . solutions. and that’s A-N-S-A. yeah, A-N-S-A. that’s my kids’ names. Ansar . Solutions. there is no . com or anything. it’s just Ansar . Solutions. uh there’s a contact form that’s the easiest way to reach me or you can find me on linkedin awesome. so the ratio i’m gonna open. You thanks for coming on. Thanks for coming. You bet. Have a good one. Thanks all. LET’S G-