Precision & Data in Martial Arts with Ali Ghafour, Founder of 20/20 Armor & Toronto CTO Meetup Group

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:03) Hello, my friends. Today, Joel is talking to Ali, martial artist and founder of 20/20 Armor, as well as the Toronto CTO Meetup Group. And they discuss how developing strong discipline is key to success, how 20/20 Armor is bringing precision and data analytics to martial arts competitions, and tips for getting the most out of your R&D investments. All of this right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast.

(Ali at 00:00:34) Here we go.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:35) This is the Modern CTO Podcast. I'm currently resourcing myself in the discipline skill. So I found that it's very easy for me to do what comes naturally and what I enjoy, right? Which is the technology, building the systems, technology leadership, that type of stuff. It's very difficult for me to do things I don't enjoy. And so on this quest of learning to do things I don't enjoy, I found out that the skill for that is called discipline.

(Ali at 00:01:16) You know, there's two parts to it. I want to say, Joel, there's discipline and then that end goal. You've got to keep that end goal in mind because there's going to be times you're going to do stuff. You know, are we allowed to swear? Am I allowed to swear?

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:29) But my goal was to reduce—there's a—everyone will say, yeah.

(Ali at 00:01:35) I can make—

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:36) Myself do stuff I don't want to do, right? I would even say that to you six months ago. But the difference is when you look at it as an art form and you intentionally go after it, right? I find that the space between is what makes the difference. How much convincing, how much energy I spend convincing myself to do the thing I know is right for me. Now there's a huge waste there, talking yourself up, convincing yourself to do it, to be able to be disciplined on demand and snap and say, this is what I'm doing. This is what I'm focusing on. Ignore everything else and only do this. That is something that is in the 1% of people. It's very rare.

(Ali at 00:02:11) Yeah. And I don't know how absolute, how 100% everyone is on that. Like, let's say you're a business owner and a big fire comes up, literally a physical fire, right? You've got to take care of it. And the bigger your organization is—think of Elon Musk. Think of all the things he has to deal with, and literally fires, probably, like, cars burning, right? And then somehow, he stays focused. And, you know, there's ways, for sure, having a big team, a trusted team. But also, I think being disciplined like you said, but also having that end goal in mind and saying, hey, this is a setback or maybe I do need to focus on this, but this is what—you know, we're going to save humanity and go to Mars kind of thing. I think that helps reset once in a while.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:59) Yeah. And hit some robots on the way. Well, not robots. All right. So you've got to tell me exactly—I know your background's martial arts. You've traveled the world, competed, prepared for the Olympics. Correct? You're qualifying for that? And then now you're in this project where I have the benefit—the people listening can't see you, but I can see you. You've got the 20/20 Armor shirt on. You make this vest, this technology vest that kids use to spar with each other and sort of quantify points. Tell me about that.

(Ali at 00:03:27) Yeah. This goes back to another passion. I'm—okay, I shouldn't say passion because I throw that word around. It's not the same as martial arts, but I used to love playing video games. And now video games is a career, so that's why you've got to be careful when you say passion. Right? So I used to love playing Street Fighter as a kid and Mortal Kombat, and I think a lot of the audience probably can relate to that. If you're kind of technical, you probably dabble in games a little bit. And so I love Street Fighter. It was my favorite game. And then when you look at any martial art—boxing, MMA, Taekwondo, that was my sport—you try to explain the scoring to somebody, they have no idea what's going on. You ask anybody, I'll ask you, do you know how Taekwondo scored? Then you'll be like, uh, no. You kick it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:12) They hit each other. Now I think I watched it once, and it had something to do with, like, the type of hit had a point. But I couldn't—I don't know in my head.

(Ali at 00:04:21) Yeah. 99% of the general public—I should say 100% of the general public—they have no idea. Yeah. Only if you play that sport do you really know what's going on. And so I looked at myself and said, there's 240 million people that play soccer. There's about 240 million people that play martial arts. Everyone knows how soccer works, but no one has a clue how any martial art works. I mean, that doesn't make sense. But then everyone knows Street Fighter, even if you never played Street Fighter. You know Street Fighter.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:48) Everybody knows Street Fighter. Yeah.

(Ali at 00:04:50) Health bar goes down, you're dead. And so put those two together. And really, that was kind of the moment. And so when you put those two things together, two things happen. Two significant things happen. One, you open the sport for more kids to participate in. Because once you say game, they're more likely to participate, stay longer, learn these life skills to protect themselves, anti-bullying, these sort of things that we know have long-term effects into adulthood. And we see it all the time, kids transforming from these, you know, shy, meek children to full grown adults with their backs up. And then the second part is once you make it spectator friendly, now you can make it a real pro sport that everyone else can watch. And so by changing it to the system—and we didn't just change the scoring. We actually created technology hardware that enabled all that as well and created at a price point and ease of use that everyone could use it. That's kind of where it all—that's kind of like the genesis of the ideas that that brought it altogether. And, you know, when someone steps back, they're like, yeah. Obviously. That makes sense. I think that's a good thing in the sense that, like, yeah, why didn't anyone else think of it? If you look at most kind of good cool ideas, that's usually what happens. It's like, yeah, why didn't anyone else think of—someone thought of Uber at some point. You know what I mean? Just use your phone to call a cab. Like, how would you even do it before? And so I think this kind of falls into that category because it's so, like, obviously.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:21) No. That is exactly—so the first—my wife and I were talking, I think like three days ago. And I've got this new project called LeaderBits that we talked a little bit about. But the thing she said to me was—she was, you know what, Joel? She goes, what's really interesting is she goes, this is like the first time I feel like you're doing the thing that you should be doing in life. Like, you're always helping people. Like, I'm always building the app for the real estate person or building the app for the entrepreneur or the investment company. She goes, this is the first time that you're like building it, and this is like the product matches who you—like, your soul.

(Ali at 00:06:56) Yeah. Yeah. And great things happen when that happens. You know, I'll give you an example. Like, when things get down, and they will get down—

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:04) Always. Yeah.

(Ali at 00:07:06) The—I don't know. The grit that comes out of that, the things that you do to like pull yourself out of that to make that happen, can only come out when it's for you, when this is a project that is like you're doing with your project and me with mine.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:23) I just got goosebumps.

(Ali at 00:07:24) Yeah, man. No. I'm telling you because there's so many times where doors close for me, right? I'm like, why? I thought that was a sure deal. And, you know, I can't sleep that night. And my wife, going back to my wife, so supportive. It's like, you know what, honey? Every time a door closes, somehow, somewhere, I don't know, the door opens. And like, that grit comes out, and I find these people to contact. So for example, there's this one investor that's going to put in money, and I knew for sure. I thought it was a done deal. I didn't think about it. Then last minute, they get cold feet for whatever reason or they had some other investment that they put money into, so they ran out of money. I'm like, oh, okay. Okay. Now how do I find, you know, $250,000? Next day, I get it. You know, I called some people up and do that. But it came through that the desire—I share with them vision. I said, look. This is where we are. Everything's going fantastic. It's a great opportunity. And then it just happened like that. So whereas if you don't have that big job, you just kind of take that hit and like—right? I'll get a job.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:25) No. That's like the work that's the entrepreneurial struggle. You're watching your finances and, like, you're always readjusting your bailout point to have to get a job. But like, there was a big moment for me when I saw that when I'm like looking at that bailout point, I'm like, there's no bailing on this one. Like, this is the one where you make it work. Like, this is the one where you just do it. Like, there's—you just make it happen.

(Ali at 00:08:54) And you know what? People in technology, you know, this audience, they're blessed. They're blessed. We're very employable. Very, very—if not the most employable people, you know, in today's market, in North America anyways. So it's like, you could always find work.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:11) Yeah. And so what's—your product I'm just curious real quick. You have—they're the vest. They have technology in them, the reporting scoring. Is it done through like the Internet?

(Ali at 00:09:23) Yeah. So, you know, we have to meter the technology that we give out because the martial art industry is, you know, not a technology-based industry. Like, they don't even track scores. Right? They manually guess when a score happens. It's like running the 100 meters and guessing what your time was. So by introducing this technology that shows a score on the vest itself, that's like light years ahead. So we're introducing it by just saying, hey. Use this vest. There's four buttons on it just like a video game controller. The UI is there. Go ahead. And then, all the while, the thing is collecting data, and there's a Bluetooth component in there. The next step is what's going to happen, and we know this. They're like, hey. You know what? This is really fun. How do I track it over time? Like, oh, you're ready now. Yes. Okay. Now tap your phone on this and actually pull the data out, and then now you got all the analytics. If we come in with analytics day one, they're like, uh, it's too confusing. I don't know how to use this thing. Remember, they're at zero, right? So the next step is the vests are already enabled to connect to phones, then enable that data extraction, and then there's a monthly recurring software license attached to that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:33) No. That's really smart, though. So it's all stored in the vest, and you tap the phone into the vest, and then it goes into your app, and then it gets stored. That's really cool, man. I like that.

(Ali at 00:10:41) And then you went back to the Internet piece, so then that goes up to the cloud. And then what's cool there is now you can compare yourself with other athletes. So how is my kick compared to the world champion? So let's say you do one kick and you record it against the world champion's record. And then it's like, I am 50% on the way there. Or, heck, I got even a harder one than the world champion. But, well, I see the world champion side because he has a hard kick because there's a whole bunch of other reasons, right? But so yeah. So to be able to now compare yourself with other people, that's something that's never been done before either. But that's step three, right? So these are kind of all the cool things that can come out of it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:16) Oh, it's so exciting. So did you develop the initial software yourself, or did you partner with some firmware people, hardware people to develop it?

(Ali at 00:11:24) Yeah. I did V1, the MVP to, with the scoreboard and stuff like that. It was—I had to brush up on my JavaScript. And remember, I have a computer science degree, and I was a CTO. I'm the CEO now of this company. But, you know, I haven't touched code for a while, and JavaScript has come up such a long way over the years. And so I brushed up on my skills. I got it just enough to work to display a scoreboard and get the data out of the vest and convince customers and investors that we have something. But now there's people that are way better at it than me in doing it. So, yeah, I did the initial versions.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:02) I have a question. I have a silly question. Okay. So, obviously, you're a strong individual. You're a very fit Canadian Taekwondo team. Like, you're brilliant. Right? How much does that prepare you? Like, how much is like being Taekwondo or being a black belt or being an expert at that, and you're in the room with the mats and the robes and whatnot, how much does that prepare you if somebody like straight up walks off the street and like goes to punch you in the face?

(Ali at 00:12:26) Uh, yeah. Great question. So there's two parts. If you get blindsided, you're never protected from that. Because someone hits you from the back, unless you got eyes in the back of your head. But I mean, you might be a little bit more physically fit to recover from an injury. But what's interesting is there's two things. I find martial artists, they walk a certain way. They walk with confidence. If a person has to pick between two people to take on, all things equal, and the other guy walks straighter, they will never pick the guy who walks straighter, right. So even by walking in a certain way, you take yourself away from being a target. So that's one. And then two, if someone does try to do something, you have this confidence inside you. You really do. That if you need to protect yourself, you can, and you can seriously injure somebody. So that's something that's always innate, and that's always ready to execute. And as soon as you put adrenaline into your body, like, that's just—you've got another level, right? All of a sudden, you can kick like three times higher and run three times faster. So, yeah, that's something that I value a lot. I'm so glad I got that life skill, and especially as a father, right? To be able to protect my family if there is ever—I mean, I live in Canada, so it's really safe up here. But, yeah, if ever the need arises, I feel confident that I can protect myself.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:42) That's awesome. Yeah. It's—I feel like when you were explaining that, what was running through my head is like music. Like, right when somebody hands me a guitar, I'm like, uh, but then like, give me thirty seconds to just feel around the guitar, and now I can just play without thinking.

(Ali at 00:13:53) Mhmm. Right? Interesting. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:54) So they go over, they push you down, you're like, whoa. Yo. What's going on? And then like, you get that adrenaline, now you can just fight without thinking, and you just like—

(Ali at 00:14:00) But, actually, it's a little bit different. So if, for example, let's say you come up to me and I'm in front of you, the fighting instinct kicks in right away, and there's no like—

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:09) Oh, really?

(Ali at 00:14:10) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The fighting instinct kicks in right away. So like—and if they start talking to you or take a swing at you, but you're—and you're looking at them, you—it will kick in.

(Ali at 00:14:20) There's no like for that. Yeah. But what we typically do in martial arts is we talk first because we know we can seriously hurt somebody. You don't want to go that route if you don't have to. So can you talk your way out of this? It's always a better solution.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:37) Yeah. Having a kid changed that instinct in me. I'm going to now avoid things because I want to see her turn five. I want to see her turn two. I want to see her turn one. You know? Like, I want to see her. I want to be there at her graduation. Like, nothing, no silly little thing in life matters.

(Ali at 00:14:57) Yeah. Exactly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:58) What matters is getting to that next step. So you have a strong technical background, strong physical background. You've merged the two together at your core. Do you have any employees currently?

(Ali at 00:15:11) Yeah. Yeah. We do. We got an R&D team of about five people. We contract out to a group here that does some of our hardware building because hardware, we kind of just build it once and it's good to go. Software, you're always tweaking things. And then in sales and marketing, there's about three now. It's going to be four in a couple months.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:34) That's awesome. So you have your system figured out, and so now you're just at the point where you're growing, being patient, being hungry, growing, improving. I really enjoyed how somebody connected us. You came up on my radar like three different times, and I think I reached out. And within twenty minutes, we just both happened to have an opening in time and we just jumped on a quick Zoom call. But the reason why I'm pointing this out is because that quality about your ability to network and your ability to bring the people together for the meetup, this is a very important quality that exists in the larger company CTOs. So when you get past the 30 employee range in technology, when you have more than 30 engineers, you get to that 30, 50, and you've solved the roughness of teams of teams—that's a big milestone—then after you've solved that roughness of teams of teams, a part of your pie chart should be available for networking and open opportunity, meeting with your top customers, meeting with people that can really change your business and grow it in technology. And I see people not doing that and then calling me up and saying, hey, what should I be doing? And that's the advice I give them. So kudos on that.

(Ali at 00:16:46) Yeah. Thanks. And I think part of that is now because I have a CEO role, and that comes default with that role. You kind of have to do that. And some CTOs, like you mentioned, only until they get a little bit later on do they realize because, you know, a Chief Technology Officer shares some of similar roles as CEO. You know, manage budgets, hire teams, represent the company, maybe for different aspects of the business, but you're doing similar things. And we've seen in industry, CTOs become CEOs. Right? It's not like you never hear of a CTO becoming a CEO. So those skills are very valuable, very necessary. And yeah, I agree with you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:28) So your first computer, Commodore 64?

(Ali at 00:17:30) Yes, sir.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:31) Yeah.

(Ali at 00:17:31) Buck Rogers. What were some other games I played? Am I dating myself? Well, I was born in 1979. There was another. I forget the name. I think it's Galactica. Oh, yeah. I mean, all I did was play video games, obviously. What else are you going to do? They were on tapes, man. They were on tape. So cool. Yeah. And my dad bought it for me. And then my first programming experience, it was an x86, and it was Snake in DOS. And I hacked it to give myself 99 lives.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:03) You got it.

(Ali at 00:18:04) There's no way we're going to do it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:06) Yeah. You could change variables. Come on.

(Ali at 00:18:09) Yeah. Well, I didn't even know what a variable was. Right? I mean, honestly, it was a very empowering feeling, and that was a long time ago to be able to control this computer to do what you want. Right? I mean, if you think about that, that's at a very optimal level. Yeah. And I was like, that's the cool thing. It kind of listens to you. And then that was kind of the spark to get into technology.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:32) Nice. So that's what got you to fall in love with technology.

(Ali at 00:18:36) Yeah. And it's funny. You know, games. And that's usually for a lot of kids. Right? Oh, yeah. Learn through gaming. Ties back into the 20/20 Armor thing. Same thing. Right? If you're playing a video game, but you're learning this other kind of life skill, then you're more likely to do it, and then you benefit from it. You enjoy it. Same thing when I cracked, when I hacked Snake. I thought this was fun. And then X years later, I have a degree in computer science. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:00) That's amazing. You know, I didn't—I'm just thinking back now while you're talking—I didn't really connect games to programming until much later in life.

(Ali at 00:19:06) Oh, really?

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:07) Yeah. Because I was big into playing the early console games, and then I did some Carmen Sandiego, you know, on the computer. But my introduction in the environment I was in for writing code and technology was enterprise, memories, buffers, very technical stuff simply because my father did that. And so to me, technology and code was like a cheeseboard and a microchip. And then the software that you would use to make the diode light up or, you know, whatever it may be. So it wasn't until, I don't know, five, seven years later that I even realized that—I missed that whole train. Like, if I would have known that you could have used the code to make video games, I would have done that.

(Ali at 00:19:52) Yeah. Yeah. I didn't—it was just by luck. My cousin had a, you know, a computer. He was the first one in the family to kind of get one of those x86s. You know, they were watching a movie. I was kind of not doing anything. I'm like, oh, what is this file? Text editor that opens Word files. Hey, snake.snake.das. What is a variable? And then it just kind of, you know, went that way. And yeah, it's kind of fun.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:18) So right now, you have a partner who's helping you run the CTO meetup because you're heavily focused on the 20/20 Armor, which is doing fantastic. So when's the next engagement? When's the next speaker? Should I go see, talk to him about that?

(Ali at 00:20:36) Yeah. Yeah. Bowden is an amazing guy. He and Eric as well, they both help co-host the CTO meetups now. And yeah, Bowden has been around the block and then some. He's been CTO of Ripple. He's got his own company now. It's a technology company for matching companies to staff based on personality.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:06) Oh, really?

(Ali at 00:21:06) Yeah. Yeah. It's called Forte, F-O-R-T-A.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:11) Oh, I'm interacting with him somehow, because that's not an unfamiliar name for me.

(Ali at 00:21:16) If you are in the Toronto world, you've come across Bowden somehow in the CTO world. So yeah. And so he's very connected as well. Great guy. I think he's done exited probably two or three companies. I think he's the godfather. And he's older than me too. So technically—but the great, can we call him the great godfather?

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:40) Yeah. Yes. We can. We can absolutely call him the great godfather of the Canadian CTO scene. Yeah.

(Ali at 00:21:47) Yeah. So we meet up every month, and the format's pretty straightforward because there's a lot of smart people in the room. We get one person to talk about a topic. They do a presentation, ten, fifteen minutes. And it really becomes just discussions. Like, oh, what's your experience in this? What's your experience in this? You know, that kind of seeds everything, and then everyone else kind of talks about whatever kind of challenge you're dealing with. I'm looking to hire. I'm looking to get hired. I got this problem. And it's great. It's a great format. We usually get about thirty, forty people showing up, and that's just limited by space because it's harder to get venues for more than 50 people. I mean, they're available. It just takes a little more organization. And besides, after that, the one-on-ones are going to be a little bit harder. But yeah, every meetup is always packed. And we charge for it just so we can get people to commit and so we can also give them food. Yeah. And so we range from topics from hiring to QA to relationships with the executive team, almost zero to do with programming. There's not one topic ever that's ever been about write code. Um, but, you know, cloud, which cloud services. Yeah. So it's all the things that apply to a CTO and the challenges that they raise. And then, obviously, there's ongoing conversations on the Slack channels that we have, because once a month is great, but then, you know, problems happen all the time or questions happen all the time. And so there's a very active Slack group that's actually nationwide, Canada nationwide, that people ask questions and get connected. I had a question, for example. We have this program called, um, a government program that helps reimburse research and development money. So there's tons of firms that do that. So I asked a couple of people, who do you use? Couple of people had some recommendations, and I used them. Right? I mean, yeah, I could Google that, but I'd rather much get the people that I trust, that they've used, to give me some recommendations.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:46) Who'd you go with? Do you remember who you went with?

(Ali at 00:23:49) Yeah. They're called MGMT Group. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:53) MGMT Group?

(Ali at 00:23:54) Yeah. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:55) That's a fun name to say.

(Ali at 00:23:57) Yeah. Yeah. I think it's Management Group, but I think they shortened it to MGMT. Yeah. And so they provide—I'm very happy with the service they provide so far.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:04) Yeah. I had a company actually reach out to me and said, hey, we do this thing with R&D tax credits. We take a look at it. And I took a look at it, and I was like, oh, this is cool. But it was—they were doing well, and they had 10 people. The guy I was speaking to was a product CTO type. And I was completely made aware of that entire industry. Yeah.

(Ali at 00:24:27) But you guys have that in The States? Yeah. Okay. I didn't know. I know it's pretty good in Canada and in Ontario.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:36) Oh, that's Toronto. I forget when people are in other countries because we have the Internet and we're all here. Right?

(Ali at 00:24:41) Yeah. Like, aren't you just down the street? Pretty much. Yeah. Right. Well, how about from Toronto? Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:45) I have a passport, so I'll swing by for the next one.

(Ali at 00:24:47) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:49) So yeah. Yeah. We have some concept of a—I'm not an expert in it, but, apparently, you get reimbursed on your payroll tax for R&D expenses, and most people don't claim it, and they don't know about it. And so—

(Ali at 00:25:03) Yeah. I mean, I'm pretty sure most CTOs here know about it, but it is a huge revenue. I mean, it's a lot of money. Right? I mean, you get anywhere from 40 to 90% of R&D back. And if you look at a startup, and let's say you have 20 employees, right, and if it's a technology company, most of it is R&D, especially at the early days. And then your biggest expenditure is headcount. If they get, you know, forty, fifty, 60% of that back, why wouldn't you do that?

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:31) Yeah. I think it's even more in The United States.

(Ali at 00:25:34) Oh, is it?

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:35) Okay. There's limits. They were explaining it to me, but I was like—and then it carries over too. So you can carry it over.

(Ali at 00:25:43) Yeah. You got a better deal than we think.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:44) Well, I wouldn't, overall—

(Ali at 00:25:47) Yeah. Well, there's some things, maybe not. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:50) You know what? You know what's interesting too is I was talking to my wife about different countries because we were looking at Sweden and some other countries where I happen to have a lot of great relationships and how they raise their kids and their happiness levels and their education styles, which vary incredibly. And it's almost like looking at the cities in your country. Every city has almost a slightly different style, different states have different tax rates. It's really just an extension of that. You just do it on a larger scale. You go to a country and they have slightly different themes, and then their states or provinces, whatever may be, have slightly different themes within them. And so, really, it's like everything's different. It's just where you decide to go, and nothing's perfect all the time and nothing's perfect period. But it's really just, you know, what's right for you right now. So—

(Ali at 00:26:38) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:40) This is exciting. So what is the most, like, exciting jump out of bed thing that you're working on right now at the company?

(Ali at 00:26:49) Oh my god. So the World Taekwondo Federation, the sport governing body for taekwondo worldwide, they had mentioned to me that, you know, when you guys are ready, we want to demonstrate this to all the executives. And yeah. And I'm like, that's freaking amazing, because—and think about that for a second. Right? Here's a small company in Toronto saying to the sport federation of the world that this is how the sport can change for the better. And they're like, yeah. Come on down and show all our busy executives who travel 260 times a year. That's a pretty big deal and, um, big honor, big responsibility, have a little extra weight on the shoulder. And then, also, it all kind of trickles down. It's all—think about the responsibility of that in a different way. So you got two athletes competing in different countries to win an Olympic gold medal. It's literally life changing. Not in Canada, and US a little bit. It's okay. But you get millions of dollars. You know? You get your whole life taken care of. If you win a gold medal in certain countries, you don't have to work the rest of your life. And here I am having to develop systems to make sure that that stuff is fair and it works. That's awesome. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:00) But who better, though? I mean, you've dedicated your life to this.

(Ali at 00:28:05) Yeah. I'm going to continue to build a strong team. Obviously, it's not just me. There's other people that are part of this, and I'm going to make sure I find other people that have that same passion and experience. But yeah. But I think it's—I can find those people easier because I can try to find clones of me. Yeah. There we go. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:28) So I know that's something close to your heart.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:30) Yeah. So we actually—I've tried a number of different messages to see what people apply, respond to. And at the same time, learning, figuring out how to do sales. Like, I've never done sales cycles before.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:44) I don't know anything about that. And so I tried a couple different messages, and then what I found out is that it's more about just asking them what's going on with them and then seeing if there's a fit to what I'm doing. And if there is, then there's an opportunity. If there's not, then there's not an opportunity. So I took that approach and sort of everything changed and got a lot better, and now I'm working with all sorts of companies.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:12) So let's see. I have a good question for you.

(Ali at 00:29:17) Mhmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:18) So Elon Musk sees your vest at one of the competitions, okay?

(Ali at 00:29:22) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:22) He's like, "Whoa, what is that? I want to know how this works." That's not how he talks, but—

(Ali at 00:29:26) I imagine definitely. I know that he stutters a little bit more, but yeah, that was the worst Elon Musk impersonation ever. I know, I know, I know. My wife tried to do a March—and it is the worst or no, she did Carl Sagan, and she's just, "Carl Sagan." I'm like, "That is not Carl Sagan."

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:47) I don't know though, dude. But you've got to be pretty lucky that your wife even knows who Carl Sagan is.

(Ali at 00:29:53) That's true.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:56) So he sees the vest at the competition. He thinks it's unbelievable because he has kids and they fight on his jet, and so he wants to see who wins, who's better. And so he hunts you down and he says, "Hey, I want a couple of vests. In exchange, I'm going to let you use my time machine. You're going to get to go back ten years and give yourself one piece of advice." What would it be?

(Ali at 00:30:18) Ten years? I'm 38 now. 28. What was I doing? I just retired. Okay, so I'm trying to get in the mindset of me at 28, and then what would I tell myself? So what would be the learning experience?

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:34) Did you say anything?

(Ali at 00:30:35) There's not too many things I regret. It's because either I learned from it or I just benefited from it. But one piece of—oh, I didn't know this at 28, and I kind of fell into it and materialized it into words afterwards. But it was this: my definition of risk. And I kind of just started this entrepreneurship world, and I give this—and I say this in some of the talks I give—is that things are not as risky. There's very little things that are risky. Going to jail and dying are really the two categories, and everything else is not risky. Because, especially as an immigrant, I came to Canada at the age of five. My parents had no money. Typical story. No money, two kids, barely spoke the language. That's freaking risky. And even in Canada, let's say you fall flat on your ass. The streets—you know, there's welfare. You're not going to die. In other countries, you die, right? So what is the absolute worst case situation that can happen to you is that you're still living and you're not in jail. You still have your freedom. You're still living. There's always a chance to get better. So when that's your bar for risk, when it's that low, you can do anything. It's a very liberating feeling believing that and understanding that. You feel like you can do anything. And obviously, you still have—if you have responsibilities—I didn't have kids at that point, wasn't married at that point. You have the responsibilities to take care of whoever you need to take care of, or it could be aging parents or family. Everyone's situation is a little bit different, but I didn't have any of that. And then I started my entrepreneurship gig. But if someone told me that right away, I think I would have probably moved a little bit quicker. But that's the biggest thing that I share with people is that, man, if you're not going to die or go to jail, then it's not risky.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:37) I love that. If people want to find out more about you, how do they do that? Twitter, LinkedIn? Where do you hang out?

(Ali at 00:32:44) Twitter, I use it. I get notifications, but I just really follow what Elon Musk says on that. You know, I'm really a big fan of his too.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:52) I'm a big fan of his too, man. Yeah. Awesome. Dude, this has been the best, man.

(Ali at 00:32:57) Thanks, Joel. Thanks for having me, man.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:59) Yeah. Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you at all or whatever you need. The door is always open. Just let me know.

(Ali at 00:33:06) Sure. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:08) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you would like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email: [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.