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Re-Industrialize or Become Irrelevant
12 Plays2 months ago
In this Voice of Growth episode, Manny sits down with David Costello (UA Ventures) to dissect what truly scales: grit, cash, and systems. From a fulfillment startup that grew from a shuttered dry cleaner into a 50,000 sq ft operation serving Shark Tank brands and QVC campaigns—to backing founders across national security and healthcare—David shares the scars behind phrases like “every customer is precious” and “burn the boats.” We cover world travel shaping perspective, why re-industrialization matters, how to hire (and get out of the way), and why process beats heroics if you want a business that runs without you. Plus: AI’s “one-employee unicorns,” integrity, and building shin-kick tolerance in leadership.
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Transcript
Mastering Mind and Market
00:00:04
Speaker
The voice of growth, mastering the mind and market.
00:00:10
Speaker
The world is a big place, more valuable than gold. Oh, then we started to get into shark tank companies. but Every customer is precious. We learned that the hard way.
00:00:22
Speaker
Tolerance for a shin kick becomes like nothing. Probably one of the hardest parts about growing business. Well, you don't like change, then you're going to hate irrelevancy.
00:00:34
Speaker
You might start thinking about how to be that billion dollar one employee company. I do not want to do this anymore.
Introducing David Koslow
00:00:45
Speaker
David Koslow, you've got nearly a 20 year history of so many things. I mean, I was looking at your LinkedIn bio. you know, scrolling, scrolling.
00:00:58
Speaker
You've done account management, you've done sales, you've been involved with plastic companies, you've done um things with the logistics side of the world, and now you're basically at the helm in part of the UA Ventures.
00:01:11
Speaker
So a lot of things that you've been doing, what drives you? What is the motivation that gets you up in the morning?
The Drive for Success
00:01:20
Speaker
I'm one of the most competitive people that I've ever met.
00:01:24
Speaker
I want to win every game, every day, everything that I do. I kind of put everything in like this ah us versus them kind of mentality. And as soon as I'm committed to something, I just go all in and and just drive at it.
00:01:40
Speaker
And I just stop or I just don't stop. I just relentless towards it. Now, is this like a like a family trait? Is this like a Dacostola trait or is this sort of unique to you?
00:01:51
Speaker
I think it's a family trait. if you If you were to meet the other Dacostolas, they would all have a similar demeanor. We're very competitive. We're always trying to, you know, beat each other out. And, you know, it's always been a thing where, um you know, it's also kind of like us against the world kind of a thing.
Roots and Education
00:02:10
Speaker
We've always kind of had that mentality. Yeah.
00:02:12
Speaker
But but yeah, it's just it's a very blue collar family. You know, a lot of the things I've done are, you know, are beyond what other people have done or they've kind of gone a completely different direction and been wildly successful.
00:02:26
Speaker
You know, I'm the only one that kind of has my path that I know. Now, where'd you grow up? You grew up in Florida or somewhere? Chicago. Chicago. the Chicago land area.
00:02:37
Speaker
Grew up in the suburbs and then proceeded to move to the city the second I got out of college. But you went to Miami for school. Miami University of Ohio. Oh, so that that Miami. That Miami. Got it.
00:02:50
Speaker
Oxford, Ohio. Much different than the U. Yeah. The University of Miami. So... With respect to your blue collar roots, you know, I i have a very similar story you know, my whole family is was either a blue collar of some level or they were business owners. My grandmother yeah started business with a second grade education. She grew it very quickly and amassed a lot of momentum and clout, even to the point where senators, U.S.
Value of Customer Service Jobs
00:03:22
Speaker
senators would come and actually have lunch.
00:03:24
Speaker
in douglas a small town and they invited her and my mom and others to the white house to cook for the president very cool kind of crazy wow but a lot of restaurants in my domain and i realized as a kid i did not want to work in restaurants forever i worked as a busboy i worked i worked as a waiter yeah that was a good job so yeah that was one of the things we talked about and in a previous podcast that I believe that all sort of kids and and young adults should be work in some level of customer service, ideally as as a waiter in the restaurant world. Server.
00:03:59
Speaker
Server. I think that all young adults should travel. Yeah. And, you know, around the globe, you get a different perspective. And i'm going to come back to that for you.
00:04:10
Speaker
And then the third thing I think is really important is learn how to use your hands. whether that's whatever that means, right? It's pretty wide range. So do you have any experience with a world travel?
Expanding Worldview through Travel
00:04:23
Speaker
Sure. and when I was, In college, you know I wanted to study abroad and you know everyone else I knew was going to Europe and backpacking around and it was just basically, ah like ah it's it's meant to be an experience. that You find growth and things happen to you when you're there, but it's not really serious. like You don't really walk away with like you know hard skills from it.
00:04:49
Speaker
But ah my parents insisted that I travel to Asia Okay. There was a, there was a Pacific rim program where you got a chance to go to Asia. Now this is also, i mean, this is, you know, nearly 20 years ago.
00:05:02
Speaker
So the Pacific rim program was, it was two weeks in China, uh, two weeks in Japan, uh, Two weeks in Korea and then, um one week in Hawaii.
00:05:18
Speaker
Okay. So the Asia of the United States. Yeah. You know, it's furthest West you can get. So what was your experience with that? What did you come back with when you did that? When I did that, I realized that the world that I knew, like i had not branched out enough. like I just didn't even ah like there i didn't even have assumptions of what was going on out there.
00:05:39
Speaker
And so it kind of really opened my eyes. And I kind of said at this point, like then i should never put a restriction on how far I go to seek something. If you think of a...
00:05:51
Speaker
like I was like, man, like in the past, it was kind of like, oh man, this is going to be a 20 hour flight. Like, oh, it's too far. You shouldn't go. It's too far. But no, that's what makes it great is because no one else goes that far.
00:06:03
Speaker
And then so when you're there, you're one of the only people there that comes from where you are. And so at that time in China, it was kind of a unique thing. And You know, it was part of a ah big university program and we got a chance to then go to all the different expat areas. So we got a chance to meet executives that were working at different businesses. We got a chance to meet like the American like companies that were doing business in China, like going to their headquarters.
00:06:30
Speaker
All that was really cool. And it just taught me that, you know, the world is a big place and you got to go. You got to go. If you look at your travels, what you said, 20 years ago? or Yeah.
00:06:42
Speaker
And you compare that world and your experience in that world with the world that we see today. What do you see different?
00:06:52
Speaker
Like how, like in what way? Like in the way that China has grown or like Korea, Japan? Yeah. The whole, the the whole Asian rim. Yeah. Well, I'm not really an expert on this area, but I will say when I went there the first time, cause I've been back the first time I went there, there were nothing but cranes in the air.
00:07:12
Speaker
there was That was all you saw. And the whole idea is that they they found out that they were getting the Olympics. And it was they started building all the infrastructure. to go But I mean, the number of cranes that I can visually remember, I mean, there might have been 100 in my eyesight.
00:07:29
Speaker
And I think of what's going on in the United States, and you might see one. Right. you know, if you go somewhere and there's like five or six cranes, like they're really getting it done. Yeah.
00:07:39
Speaker
But there, man, there, it's a completely different scale. And then also too, how different China is from Korea, from Japan. you know, in Japan, it felt like I kind of went into the future. The whole place was just a wild, like, you know, like, it was like a ah movie of what you would expect the future to look like.
00:07:58
Speaker
And yeah I mean, it was just that, you i also met some amazing people along the way. Like I, we lived with students and things like that, but, but yeah, now it's like, you know, they, they, they learned all the lessons and are,
00:08:12
Speaker
working really hard to get there. Do you worry about our country and where we're headed with with that sort of backdrop in mind?
America's Industrial Challenge
00:08:20
Speaker
um Yes. I mean, in the past, you used to be able to kind of like discount You know, China is like, oh, well, that's where like our stuff gets made. It's just a bunch of you know, it's people that work for a few bucks that like make things.
00:08:35
Speaker
That's not necessarily the case. I mean, they have some very sophisticated manufacturing. They have advanced automation and robotics. I mean, they are moving at a pace and everything they have is kind of subsidized by their government. So everything just kind of like they don't do it to have like a healthy P&L.
00:08:53
Speaker
Right. They're doing it because they were told to do it. Right. And they go. And so, you know, take that same skill set and then watch how they're applying it to their military and defense.
00:09:05
Speaker
And it's what's really kind of clear to me that like they are not just, you know, ah when when you see Vladimir Putin and, you know, i ah you know, President Xi and and North Korea walking around like that's that's a big deal. They have some they have some.
00:09:23
Speaker
muscle behind what they're describing what they're doing. And it's, you know, we need to kind of wake up and, you know, the re-industrialization of our yeah society needs to happen ASAP.
00:09:34
Speaker
What I really appreciate about that vision is, and me knowing you from dealing in the past and just kind of looking at your history is, even though you have that backdrop, you're still very driven. You're you're basically at the helm of this UA Ventures organization, which is in part leading the funding of innovation and other things like that here locally in Tucson.
UA Ventures and Innovation
00:10:00
Speaker
Give us a sense of what UA Ventures is and kind of what you're old your role is in it. Yeah, so UA Ventures, it started out as a group of like boosters for the University of Arizona.
00:10:14
Speaker
You know, the this thought was, hey, we give a lot of money to like the football and basketball team. Why don't we give some money towards our engineering programs and our photonics development and just kind of promote entrepreneurship and the further development of companies.
00:10:28
Speaker
There was a really famous company that came out of i University of Arizona um that was purchased by Rausch. for over a billion dollars. And people were like, what? like you know No one had any capital in it no one you know it. But it was straight off the university's campus.
00:10:46
Speaker
And it was a diagnostics tool that was leveraged by Rausch. And so um that's Ventana Medical. right It's sort of this classic thing that kind of made everybody go, whoa, we can do this too. And so that's how it all kind of started. And now it's evolved to the point where you know our scope is beyond just like university IP.
00:11:04
Speaker
um The scope is to find the people that are working on things that you know promote the national interest, things that are kind of helping keep people safe and healthy. ah you know We have two verticals now. One is in national security and the other one is in health care.
00:11:19
Speaker
And those each vertical kind of has its own set of companies and its own so kind of disciplines to it. But, you know the motion is pretty much the same. you know, you find the things that have the biggest societal impact and then you get behind the entrepreneurs that are doing it.
00:11:33
Speaker
And, you know, you just you just give them the the tools to like go for it and get to the next level. And for us, we now are seeing these people are growing businesses, they're earning revenue, and now they're getting to the point where they're raising additional funding or they're just straight up selling their company and those exits are exactly what we've been waiting for.
00:11:54
Speaker
and it's, you know, it's all kind of coming to fruition now. So it's a good time. I love that. We're going to put a bookmark in that because I do want to come back to that. Okay. But I want to take a five-year step back or so for you, maybe 10. Okay.
00:12:10
Speaker
Pack dash. So the pack dash story I've heard years ago and it was very interesting. I think it'd be nice for us to hear that again. What was the genesis of how that started?
00:12:23
Speaker
And what was the genesis of how it ended?
Challenges in the CBD Industry
00:12:25
Speaker
Okay. So we had a, a CBD company. That's so my brother-in-law and I decided we wanted to start a company together.
00:12:34
Speaker
We started CBD company because, um, I had, ah A family friend or or now my brother in law in Oregon, ah you know he used to grow cannabis for the marketplace of the Oregon dispensaries. He had a permit. Everything was fine.
00:12:51
Speaker
And they changed the laws there to make the permitting different. And essentially, they gave a permit to anyone who had you know ah license, like an Oregon license and a caregiver. Right. So over time, it ended up crashing the price of everything.
00:13:06
Speaker
So his whole kind of business model got decimated. He didn't know what to do next, but he said, a lot of people are going, are growing hemp. A lot of people are getting into this market. And so when we were, uh, you know, he told me that he needed help with kind of understanding the hemp marketplace. And so I kind of leaned in and i ended up finding out in Kentucky, you know, the hemp bill had passed, they were growing hemp for CBD purposes, and it was still kind of a newer thing that you didn't really see in every.
00:13:32
Speaker
gas station and like all over the country. It was very new. And at the time i figured out that I could take hemp, uh, break it down, ah into CBD isolate through a process, through ah a process.
00:13:45
Speaker
And when it was done, the weight, like the, the, the price per gram of CBD isolate was more than a price per gram of gold at the time.
00:13:58
Speaker
So you literally were able to turn plants into something that was more valuable than gold. And so as soon as we had one great deal that ended up selling some of that, and then we started to double down, triple down.
00:14:12
Speaker
Then we started our own brand. Then we started shipping it. And then it got to the point where no one wanted to work with CBD companies. because it was still kind of in this, like, what is it How does it work? Is it is it marijuana?
00:14:26
Speaker
You know, what is this? Like, how does it and so we ended up you know, after ah kind of a bunch of ah third party logistics companies kind of shunned us, and then one actually screwed up. And, you know, we were we were shipping thousands of things a week.
00:14:44
Speaker
And for a whole week, they ended up shipping cat food to our customers instead of our product. Yeah, now that I know fulfillment, what happened is someone mislabeled the bin. So the bin where they were supposed to be pulling our product,
00:14:57
Speaker
they They switched up the tags. And so there was a few thousand people that ended up getting cat food instead of our product. And we had people. We had cancer patients. We had people with epilepsy. We had a lot of people that were kind of relying on us to kind of get them this stuff.
00:15:11
Speaker
And so it became clear that if we wanted to have a reliable supply chain and we didn't want to have to pay all these crazy fees, that we just needed to do it ourselves. And so we we found ah a little, it was an old dry cleaners that had gone out of business in a retail area.
00:15:27
Speaker
uh, like strip mall, yeah we set up shop and we just started pick packing and shipping. And over time it became hard to keep people fully employed. it was really difficult to keep, um, full-time jobs for everyone.
00:15:40
Speaker
And so, because we just, we would, we would be so efficient. We would knock out like 400 orders in a day. And by you know, 11 AM, we were kind of like, Done. Right. And everyone else was kind of looking for full time work.
00:15:52
Speaker
And this is during COVID where e-commerce is now king. Right. And everything is moving really fast. And so we started reaching out to some other entrepreneurs that had similar complaints about their 3PL experience um and ended up just getting client after client after client after client.
00:16:12
Speaker
And it just started to grow, grow, grow. Then we started to get into shark tank companies. And then we started to do QVC campaigns and doing all this kind of bespoke fulfillment work.
00:16:24
Speaker
And we got, we went from a dry cleaners, uh, to a 50,000 square foot facility out in the suburbs of Chicago. and we were stacking things to the ceiling and just just rocking and rolling and it was just one of those things where it just seemed like it was so easy to acquire customers because everyone was so frustrated with the kind of large 3pl kind of world that we were just in the right place at the right time just getting it done and just working really hard to to get people what they needed but i did not grow up in a warehouse i did not grow up
00:16:59
Speaker
like doing warehousing operations. This is something that both my brother and outlaw and I just taught us, taught ourselves to to get good at. In any of that growth or as you're sort of figuring out the business, do you ever think about quitting?
00:17:15
Speaker
Yeah, all the time. I mean, it was really stressful. I mean, when you are responsible for shipping thousands of items a day, you don't get any time off. There is no like, oh yeah, I'm just gonna like, you know, I'm not feeling well, right? Like, no, this stuff needs to get out the door.
00:17:33
Speaker
And so it became this like treadmill that you could not step off of. And it was just, at some days it was just really, really challenging. and It was just impossible to, you know, to get right. Like there's so many days where things were just going wrong or like maybe they didn't show up to pick this stuff up. And then you have 60 clients that would all insist to know what's happening and why is this moving? And, you know, and then there's you could have, let's say you shipped out 2000 packages in a day.
00:18:00
Speaker
Well, What happens when five of them don't get to their destination? Whose responsibility is that, right? And every every customer is precious. We learned that the hard way. So you never wanna even screw up one.
00:18:14
Speaker
You don't even have any room for mistakes. And so some days it was just like, this is dumb. I do not wanna do this anymore. But then you get over it, that good things would happen. And then you know you'd hear from your clients how successful things are and you'd get reinvigorated and keep going.
00:18:33
Speaker
People look at entrepreneurs and they often think that it's a straight line or that it's always sort of high fives and these situations where success.
Sales Experience and Business Growth
00:18:45
Speaker
But what they don't see is like you said, sweating bullets because of this, because of that.
00:18:51
Speaker
Do you think that your previous career moves in sales and and account management, you even dabbled in a little bit of a finance thing and in in college, right?
00:19:02
Speaker
Do you think those things served you or were you just like completely green-fielding new information and new processing as you were growing the the business? So I couldn't tell you specifically how it served me, but i think what I've really become good at is just being a problem solver.
00:19:18
Speaker
And I think if the more problems you're exposed to and the more kind of alternatives you see, the more you're going to end up you know being able to have the instincts and the right decision making and being able to decide quickly on how to change.
00:19:33
Speaker
And so I think those things are kind of, you know, you kind of get kicked in the shins as you as you come up. And then pretty soon your tolerance for a shin kick becomes like nothing, right? You're like, oh, I barely feel it. yeah But to other people, this would be devastating. Like this would be the thing that would potentially make them quit.
00:19:56
Speaker
But eventually you just build these calluses and you just don't you just don't feel it the same way. And that's a
Mindset and Role Models
00:20:02
Speaker
really good segue. So the the Voice of Growth podcast is about ah the market and the mind, mindset.
00:20:09
Speaker
The market, of course, is the market as we know it, all business, strategy, operations, all that in a big bucket. And then the other part is the mind, the mindset. And we kind of lean a lot on stoic principles of the world's going to be what it's going to be. And it's just how do you react to it?
00:20:27
Speaker
Did you have any... Mentors, we were talking about this earlier in the pre-meeting. Do you have any mentors that you would look to for either direct guidance in that you would ask them questions or just look at them and the decisions they're making, whether you knew them or not?
00:20:47
Speaker
Sort of. I mean, my parents were my mentors growing up. I never really had like a third party or like kind of like a, you know, ah some person like take me under their wing and be like, hey, like kid, like, let me show you how it's done. Right. Like, you know, but my parents were entrepreneurs, right. They ran their own auto body shop.
00:21:07
Speaker
And they worked really hard and they were doing whatever they could to make it work. And they were really successful. Right. So I got to watch them every day, kind of give their whole like life and energy and, you know, ah their passion to that. And then eventually, you know, when I went like the whole thing, when I was in that scenario, I have to, you know, thank my parents for this is they, they insisted I learned the computer.
00:21:31
Speaker
I thought that was really important. to you It was really important to learn the computer. And, and the internet was just becoming a thing and they got me an AOL account, you know, and I spent time, you know, learning how to,
00:21:44
Speaker
navigate that. And, um, you know, those types of things I think became this world where it's like, I want to be a part of this world. And then that's when I started to, you know, try to reach out to different folks in that industry to kind of, you know, help guide me.
00:22:02
Speaker
Um, and I've had a few really great people that have been part of my, you know, guidance, but those people, I don't know, I, I lost touch with them and, you know, they've kind of, they served me for a certain period of time. And then ah kind of, as I evolved and they evolved and, you know, I moved into a new area and found new people. And, you know, one of the things I used to do too, is I used to when I worked at companies, so I worked at cars.com.
00:22:28
Speaker
I a place called Outcome Health. I would typically find the highest, I would go up as high up the chain as I could, like the CEO. I would find a way to talk to the CEO and I would say, can I please learn from you?
00:22:41
Speaker
Like I want to be a CEO one day. And they were like, oh, ah but well, yeah, like talk to my assistant. We'll get it set up. And they were always so very open to doing that. And so I always kind of looked at whoever was leading the business I was a part of.
00:22:55
Speaker
And I always tried to carve out my own sort of like personal time and not make it so formal, but just say like, look, like this is my journey. Like I'm going for it.
00:23:06
Speaker
Like I'm not there yet. Help me get there. And no one ever said no. Everyone was always eager to help. you know, with the exception of maybe like one or two people who had their own problems.
00:23:18
Speaker
yeah as You know, as you fast forward, you realize, my God, yeah, I'm glad that, you know, like you find out what happened to them a year after they said no. And it's like, oh yeah, they were, their life was falling apart.
00:23:30
Speaker
Being competitive, this next question will be interesting. he Do you believe that success as a business owner or entrepreneur is primarily a factor of or determination of luck, grit, or something else?
Balancing Grit and Resources
00:23:50
Speaker
I mean, it's it's primarily grit, but then the other thing that I think people don't realize is that it's also cash. You know, some like it's it really isn't enough to just...
00:24:04
Speaker
work really hard and, you know, just give everything you got every single day. Like that's the narrative most people have, but you need to have the resources in order to get beyond that. Cause you'll burn out or you'll reach a ah ceiling in what you can and can't do.
00:24:23
Speaker
There's usually always a need for either outside capital, you know, like, or just the resources to be able to hire, delegate, you know, start to build systems, start to move things around.
00:24:34
Speaker
You know, it's just, you can't just like show up every day and just expect that because you're there, that everything's going to work out. You know, it's not about showing up.
00:24:46
Speaker
It's about being able to like use your grit to prove to other people that you can be a good steward of capital. And then once you have it, then, know, then you can really in business, that's when you can start to really create success when you can kind of take yourself out of it and the thing works.
00:25:04
Speaker
And then you move on to the next thing, right? And, or not the next thing, but like the next like department, you know, or the like, all right, we need to get our sales working. Like now I'm going to do this. If you're the only one selling in your business, you'll, you'll hit a That's a huge mistake. I think that a lot of entrepreneurs, business owners make is they become the central star of their business. Yeah. Where if they leave the business fails, right?
00:25:31
Speaker
That's, that's a fact. I mean, it's, it's so hard to kind of. Elevate over it though. It's, you know, and a lot of people struggle with it. It's just really, really difficult to take yourself out and totally put, you know, make a great hire and get that person on their track and you let them do their thing.
00:25:52
Speaker
That is, you know, it it sounds easy, but it is not. It is probably one of the hardest parts about growing a business. having those kind of hard conversations? Yeah, I mean, having hard conversations, have someone that wants to wants it just as bad as you do, someone who is truly an expert in what they're doing or you know like really talented at what they're doing, and then making sure that they're doing it Well, in the same, for the same mission that you have, some people are dabblers. Some people just want a job. Some people are, uh, they say they want it, but then they realize how hard it is and then they decide to go a different direction. And, you know, you're constantly having these starts and stops.
Business Success vs. Chaos
00:26:35
Speaker
That's totally natural. That's every business, you know, most people are, if I, if you look at a business and they look like they're supremely successful and like everything's working. then they're just really good at marketing. Like they just, there's chaos behind the scenes. Oh, sure. Absolutely.
00:26:50
Speaker
What is the, if I was to ask you about a pet peeve or something that you dislike about other business people you deal with, what are a couple traits that for you kind of rub you the wrong way and why?
00:27:06
Speaker
The thing that comes to mind first is like, when you say you're going to do something, you better do it. and There's a lot of people that make are good at making plans, but then when it's time to execute or when it's time to actually get it done or time to hit that goal, they just don't. Right. Like something happened and.
00:27:27
Speaker
Now they're working on something else or they're distracted or they tried and they tried it for a couple of days. And, you know, it really, it's like look, we're going to do this thing and you have to be all in to accomplish it.
00:27:41
Speaker
And you kind of have to have that like burn the boats mentality where like, there's no plan B, like, this is what we're doing. Like, uh, you know, we're going to, we're going to go full steam in this direction. Cause otherwise if you create all these sort of.
00:27:53
Speaker
Like, you know, exit lanes and you're like oh, well, I'll try it for a week. If it doesn't work out, I'll go back to this. Then you're just kind of already probably going to miss it. like You know, and so people say things and then they don't do them.
00:28:07
Speaker
That just drives me insane. And, you know, especially as someone who's now allocating capital or giving people money, if they're not actually, you know, they, they had a pitch, they had a deck, they had a plan. this is what they're going to do.
00:28:21
Speaker
They can't do it. Then they can't, yeah it's it's like, what, do what, what happened? You know? No, I feel like it goes back a lot to fundamental values. I think there's a certain value system with respect to integrity.
00:28:36
Speaker
Meaning what you say and and basically do everything you can to accomplish what you said. And I see it a lot. I see that with all really generations, people talk about but Gen Z or millennials or whatever, there's going to be evidence in all these different generations of people that just don't, they just don't do what they say. Yeah. Say what they do.
00:28:57
Speaker
You know, it's just. Right. It comes down to being reliable, trustworthy. Like it's that integrity factor, right? I mean, people might have it like integrity is a kind of interesting word when I talk about this, because some people could be totally honest and like doing what they can, but they just didn't like, as soon as it got hard,
00:29:18
Speaker
They just didn't push through, you know, and that's the whole thing. Some people think that everything just should come easy or, yeah or they have it kind of figured out, but they might've figured out their domain. Like the whole, a business is, is a series of rockets that are all going up at the same time.
00:29:35
Speaker
It's not one rocket ship. It's a whole bunch of rockets that all need to go up at the same time to kind of get to where you want to go. It's like, they're all connected in some way. If one rocket doesn't take off, then.
00:29:46
Speaker
I mean, it could pull the rest of them down. So. Very well said. If I had a ah magic phone here that we could call Dave DeCostla when he was 18 years old, what question or what would you tell DeCostla at 18 years old if you could tell him something? I
00:30:08
Speaker
i don't know. I think I would have encouraged him to kind of like find more ways to like be involved in like processes.
00:30:24
Speaker
Cause in the beginning of my career, I was very much like that lead lead from the front that, and you know, that person that could and would do everything and anything to get stuff done. And I wouldn't build a process. I wouldn't build a system. I wouldn't, you know, bring other people along with me. I always felt like I can just accomplish it myself.
00:30:41
Speaker
Now, you know, really it's about building teams. It's about building a process. It's about building, you know, a real method to achieving my goals.
00:30:52
Speaker
In the past, I just, i don't know, I just didn't really focus on those things. And I just, it was it goes back to what I was saying. i I would just try really hard.
00:31:04
Speaker
I would just put all my effort in and work late, get up early and do those things. But, ah you know, I kind of almost like limited my results because I wouldn't build a system. 100% that resonates with me as well.
00:31:18
Speaker
Yeah. I did the same thing. And I'm obviously leading this other company, IRLabs, and I have to really be careful about wanting to do that again. And and i now lean a lot on my team and making sure that the people understand what needs to get done.
00:31:35
Speaker
I mean, quite simply, my my role as CEO is twofold, very simple. And they know this, and I want to make sure everybody knows this because its I think for me, it's very important to be simple.
00:31:46
Speaker
um I set and execute the vision of the company. It's my number one job. yeah And my number two job is block and tackle. yeah That's it. So somebody needs resources, I step in to make sure that they get them.
00:31:59
Speaker
There's a customer that there's that they're dealing with, they need help with, I step in to block and tackle. To turn this in the other direction, part B of this question,
00:32:10
Speaker
and you're about the same age as me, give or take a little younger maybe. If you were to have a similar magic phone, and if you could ask a question of a 70 year old Dave DeCosola, what would you wanna know?
00:32:30
Speaker
I'd wanna know ah when, i don't know what, like, When is it all going to align?
00:32:42
Speaker
You know, like i I have a lot of balls in the air. i have a lot of things I'm working towards. I've, ah I've made a lot of. you know, investments and bets on what I think the future is going to look like.
00:32:54
Speaker
And, you know, some of them need to kind of fit together. Right. And it's a big puzzle that I'm trying to constantly put together. And I would really want to know like where if I'm missing a piece or if I'm, you know, what what is the thing that is going to prevent me from putting the puzzle together and achieving my my ultimate goal?
00:33:14
Speaker
Yeah, it's very powerful. What do you lean on What do you lean on when you're feeling exhausted and frustrated and defeated? is there a support system that you leverage or you know, what do you do in that situation?
00:33:30
Speaker
Yeah, i mean, i think my family, like my wife is ultimately like one of my biggest champions, but she's also someone I feel like I can talk to about anything, right? I know there's some people that feel like they can't share, you know, the details with their wife because they'll get upset or you know, but for me, we have a very kind of,
00:33:49
Speaker
honest kind of dialogue on what's happening and you know what strategies and what moves were where i should and shouldn't make and if i feel frustrated if i should stick with it or you know change course and yeah you know i really respect her opinion and then broadening out my you know between my my brother-in-law and my father-in-law and you know all my people here in Tucson, they they're big.
00:34:12
Speaker
And then UAVC, I do have partners, right? So Michael and Fletcher are my partners. And I feel like I can tell them anything. And you know we can have honest dialogue about you know things that are frustrating and things that can happen. And those people you know both Fletcher and Michael have had so much success and so much experience. And you know they're they're ahead of my time right in in certain aspects. and You know, it's rare when they say anything that I'm like, what? Like what? No, it always it always makes sense. It's always grounded in reality and in like a a real ah real way, um real authentic way.
00:34:49
Speaker
One of the cornerstones of the the market side of Prefectory, which is the business behind the Voice of Growth, is the idea or the concept of global trends.
00:35:00
Speaker
We call them megatrends or whatever, which is for me was exposed in a very clear way when I work with one of my mentors and business partners, Adam Hartung. He spent his whole career looking at trends.
00:35:13
Speaker
Do you see ah couple of, well, maybe two or three trends that for you are going to redefine the next 30 years of business?
AI's Economic Impact and Future Predictions
00:35:25
Speaker
Definitely. I mean, I think we're in a kind of an inflection point. I mean, you know, AI, obviously, feel so kind of dumb bringing it up sometimes because like everybody's talking about it. You know, it's like we all know how disruptive it can be.
00:35:37
Speaker
But I think it goes back to what I was saying around systems. and being able to kind of build you know something for yourself. Like you should think of how you can leverage these tools to kind of build a team around yourself.
00:35:49
Speaker
And it's all digital, right? It's all it's agents. Tools, it's that, you know, like that there's a whole system there. And I, you know, this whole idea that there's going to be, you know, people have some question, like, when is there going to be a billion dollar company with one employee?
00:36:04
Speaker
think it's coming. I think it's coming. It's going to happen. It's going to happen in the next five years. And it's because all these tools are becoming supercharged.
00:36:14
Speaker
And like, they've always been there, but you know, they required a human being to really like drive it. Now it's not necessarily the case. Take that and then how much instability that's gonna create.
00:36:26
Speaker
that's It's going very disruptive. They say that any job that has a name attached to it, like an accountant, a doctor, a teacher, right like all that stuff is going to be conquested by AI in some way, shape, or form.
00:36:44
Speaker
And the people that are using AI with that skill set are going to dominate. It's going to it's not even going to be fair. And that the change, all that, like, you know, then take that on the global scale and then add the enterprise.
00:37:00
Speaker
And then they add the idea that like, you know, you're seeing right now that there's just not as many entry level jobs as there used to be. If you're watching this or listening to this and, you know, you're going be graduating college or just recently graduate, you're probably going like, what what am I going to do? it's true.
00:37:15
Speaker
It's really, and and, you know, I don't know. i the I couldn't tell you other than you might start thinking about how to be that that billion dollar one employee company, right? Like entrepreneurship is actually gonna rule the day, I think more than anything, because there's really, so there's so few barriers now to gain access to something really, really powerful.
00:37:37
Speaker
Like in the past, you used to have like a we used to say, well you have a 10X developer. Like you could hire a developer or like hire a group out of like India or something to like work on a website. But there was always usually one guy in that,
00:37:49
Speaker
group in that software group who was the 10x guy. That was the guy that could do anything at any time. And any junior person would go to that person if they got stuck. Well, now, like everybody could be a 10x person. That's true.
00:38:02
Speaker
You need to be a 100x person to be a leader of that, you know? So there's like this whole new dynamic there. And then if you take the, I do think there's going to be more and more that kind of geopolitical kind of instability. I think you're gonna see more countries taking over countries. I think these policies and like tariffs and all this stuff is just gonna create churn.
00:38:25
Speaker
It's just gonna create change. And you know they say, I heard something that was like, yeah um well, if you don't like change, then you're gonna hate irrelevance even more.
00:38:38
Speaker
Because that's all, like the pace of change is gonna increase. Everything's gonna just become more dynamic. People are gonna get more and more frustrated. And that's why you know I think national security becomes a really important issue because there's just so many things happening and so many kind of like a changing of the guard in so many different places and like the movement of resources and then everyone being able to be that much smarter and that much more you know right impactful, it could be bad.
00:39:12
Speaker
Yeah. um Matter of fact, my team is working on, um not sure the timing, it might come out before this one, but whatever. It is a podcast on thriving through hell.
00:39:27
Speaker
Oh, okay. So there's two main players that are thought leaders. There's a guy named Mogadot, who is the chief business officer at Google X, which is their like advanced studies, advanced systems, almost like their skunk works.
00:39:42
Speaker
yeah And there's another guy named jeff Jeffrey Hinton, who is... the godfather of AI, he won the Nobel Prize last year in physics for his deep models and the way that AI thinks is brainchild of his him and his team.
00:39:58
Speaker
They both agree that the next 12 to 15 years, starting in about 2027, are going to be extremely disruptive. All those names you talked about, accountants and doctors and whatnot, it's going to be completely decimated.
00:40:14
Speaker
And they both, they but they're not necessarily doomsdayers. Matter of fact, Mogadot believes that we should basically submit to AI because if we do so, we're not going to be factoring human issues, which we can't really do because we're still human.
00:40:31
Speaker
But after that 15 year period, it's going to be like utopia and people are going to go back to the arts and making music and this and that. The other guy is a lot more pessimistic.
00:40:43
Speaker
He believes that there's a 30% chance that AI will decimate and destroy the world in the next 15 years. o So we're also bringing in some other other topics on that. But the whole idea here is that change is going to happen whether you are...
00:40:59
Speaker
party to it or not. Right. And the other thing that's interesting is people don't mind change. They don't like being changed. Yeah. And that's where the rubber meets the road. Yeah. If something's happening in a distant, faraway country, know a big deal, but when it hits your bottom line or it hits your livelihood or your family's livelihood or whatever, then it becomes crystal clear and becomes real for you. hu You have children.
00:41:23
Speaker
Yeah, I have two. What do you believe their world will look like in 30 years, we'll say, when they're your age? Man, I, you know, it's it's interesting. So you mentioned like being a CEO, right? um You were talking about how you had the two different things. Right.
00:41:40
Speaker
And so um I still think that there's going to be the opportunity to guide vision. right you can You want to impact the world, you want to do something, like you can you can take charge and go for it. right and same thing where you're blocking and tackling. right like You're constantly going to be faced with things that are like in your way.
00:42:00
Speaker
Those are two skill sets. that I think work no matter what you're doing. right Even if you're not the head of your company as CEO, let's say you are you know a new manager or someone who's taking a new role. right If you can do those two things really well, you're going to have a whole cohort of people that will just follow you into the end of the end of the earth. like they they will People love that.
00:42:23
Speaker
They want to be around people who are really good at that. And so I do think that giving them these kind of leadership qualities, but then making sure that they understand that, like, you need to be up on every advancement as these things advance.
00:42:39
Speaker
You need to be aware of kind of the the peak of its capabilities. And so I think that it goes back to having that kind of entrepreneurial mindset and just finding where you can fit in and it should drive you like it should make you like you should get excited about it and be so like, you know, want to run towards it.
00:42:59
Speaker
i think people are still going to be doing that. i don't I think that's going to be timeless. I don't think that goes away. I think, you know, how it looks and like the structure or if your goal is to like achieve a certain job title or something, that's going to be threatened.
00:43:17
Speaker
That's probably not going to be the way to go. won't be the same. It won't be the same. It used to have a linear path and there there was ah there was almost this promise that was made to you that if you accomplish these things, you will get to that point.
00:43:31
Speaker
And those milestones, I think, are going to vanish or they're going to slip away or they're just or you can accomplish those milestones in like a couple months. You know, like you don't even need to necessarily like have a 20 year career to like achieve what you're trying to do.
00:43:46
Speaker
um but yeah, I mean, i don't know. I think people got to get comfortable with the idea that and this is what I'm kind of trying to like instill in my kids is that like you got to go out and and earn it.
00:43:57
Speaker
like nothing's going to be given to you especially in the in this new future you're describing this utopia or this doomsday you know whether it's terminator or it's like you know i don't know like green grass and you know leisure time like regardless you're gonna need purpose you're gonna be fighting against all the other people that want to get there and I don't know. I think I do think that these things will become inherently integrated into everything and you can't avoid it.
00:44:31
Speaker
And it's just, you know, you gotta, you gotta roll. You gotta roll with it. Yeah, very true. Been a great podcast. How do people find out more about UA Ventures and you?
00:44:42
Speaker
Well, website is uaventurecap.com. ah You can follow me on LinkedIn. Um, I don't really push out a lot of digital content, but that's going to change here pretty soon.
00:44:52
Speaker
Part of, you know, one of the reasons i was excited to be on this is that I, I want to start moving this direction and share some of my thoughts and my beliefs and really make that, you know, cause I am getting behind some of the most incredible things.
00:45:07
Speaker
And I just don't really talk about it much. Like my digital persona doesn't really exist, but that's going to, you know, you'll be able to follow me and and find the things I'm doing online. Yeah. there's a lot of ah power in that. We've been saying that for years that every person, every company needs to be a media agency.
00:45:23
Speaker
Right. Whether you're running a restaurant or a venture capital firm, you've got to be have that pulpit where you're announcing what's happening. um i also say that Dwayne the Rock Johnson is the last megastar that we're ever going to have.
00:45:40
Speaker
Okay. In that you're going to have a lot more micro stars or nano stars that maybe have 5,000 followers on these social media platforms. you know You can now make movies on your phone.
00:45:52
Speaker
You can now make movies using AI. And it's a whole different world. It's going to be interesting and exciting. I mean, I'm excited for it. And it's we whether we can you know we can't really do anything about it, so might as well get excited.
00:46:04
Speaker
Yeah. Thanks for your time, Dave. Appreciate it. Thank you, Manny. Cheers. Appreciate it.