Speaker 2: 00:00
All right, welcome everybody. I’m excited to bring you guys another episode of the Unfinished Business Podcast, and it’s where we explore and sit down with CEOs, visionaries, leaders, creatives, people who are out changing the world through their business, through their organization, through leadership or creativity. Because it doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve accomplished, even people who you thought have accomplished it all, like Nelson Mandela, there are still things when they were at the top of their career that they wanted to accomplish. And so we explore those here today on Unfinished Business with Eric Mulvin.

Speaker 1: 00:44
Human intelligence plus AI.

Speaker 2: 01:01
This episode is brought to you by Pac Biz Outsourcing. At Pac Biz, we help transportation, e-commerce, and software companies outsource their back office tasks with a powerful team in the Philippines that are dedicated to you as remote employees, helping your business improve support, scale faster, and grow while keeping costs in check. For example, we’ve even helped one client save over $600,000 a year in payroll costs by using dispatchers from Pac Biz. So if you’ve ever thought about outsourcing or taking on a virtual assistant, go to pack-biz.com to learn more or email us your questions at info at pack-biz.com. All right, today’s guest is the founder and CEO of Global Chamber. He’s a global entrepreneur, a connector, a trade advocate, and speaker dedicated to growing global chamber and helping members gain new clients across metros and borders more successfully. He’s had over 40 years of global trade experience in nearly every market segment, including automotive, aerospace, industrial, healthcare, life sciences, and technology. And Doug has held technology and business roles within the DuPoc Company, where he gained five patents and had experience assignments in Tokyo and Singapore. His education includes a BS in chemical engineering from the University of Utah and a EMBA from Michigan State University. He was born in Mount Crisco, New York, and has an amazing Greek American wife of 43 years and an amazing daughter who is a nurse practitioner and superstar grandson. So please help me welcome Doug Bernicki. Hey Doug.

Speaker: 02:39
Hey there. How are you, Eric? Great to have this opportunity to speak with you. It’s an awesome.

Speaker 2: 02:44
Yeah, I’m so excited to do this and uh get to know you a bit better on the show and help uh help the audience out here get to know you a bit better as well. So I know we got the intro there. I I love, you know, I’ve known you a bit over the years being part of Global Chamber, but you know, it’s one thing to see up there organizing things. It’s another thing to actually get to know your background a little bit and and where you’re from. So fascinating, and I can’t wait to dig into that.

Speaker: 03:08
Fantastic. It’s that actually I was born in Mount Kisko, New York, which is in Westchester County. It’s just a few miles north of New York City. So I’m a a New York guy, now mostly living in Phoenix and in Los Angeles.

Speaker 2: 03:22
All right. So I guess the big thing you are involved with here is the global chamber. So let’s start there and uh tell people, I think most people probably listening might not be familiar with that. So tell what is the global chamber and what do you guys do?

Speaker: 03:36
As you mentioned, I I had a corporate career. I was with the DuPont Company, a chemical engineer. I ironically wanted to clean up the world as a chemical engineer. And it turned out once I started getting into global business, that was my mission in life. I started almost uh 40 years ago with my international travel, now 65 countries. I’ve been to 49 states as well. I’m a connector. I’ve always been a connector. I’ve always seen process orientation. And so in my DuPont days, I was successful in business because I connected people. And when I retired, took an early retirement, I started to see that if there was just some organization that would be everywhere that could connect people globally, that would be an amazing thing. So I started Global Chamber, that’s what I’ve been involved with, and I’m having the time of my life. I’ve restarted my life. Hopefully, the next 10, 20 years, I’ll continue to be able to grow global chamber internationally all over the world. It’s 105 chapters already, and we’re everywhere.

Speaker 2: 04:41
Yeah, it is amazing when I do join in and I’m like, oh, there’s someone joining in from Japan, there’s someone joining in from Germany, someone from UK, Canada, like you guys are or Africa, or you know, like everywhere, those people represented. It’s really amazing. So that kind of growth, that’s that’s huge. When did you get this started?

Speaker: 05:00
This started with a bad meeting that I had in San Diego with the global organization that I said, these guys are not part of my vision. They were not collaborators, they didn’t have a global perspective. And that’s when I realized that someone needed to step in. And I was the fool to be able to say, somebody’s got to do this, pull this globally together. Fortunately, I had a global background and had certainly global interest and global connecting capabilities, and that moved things forward to the point now where we really are in every country. We’re now just building out, and it’s very exciting to see the ability to help people who don’t know what they don’t know, and also those that are very dedicated, and most of us have very great connections in the areas that we have great connections, but that doesn’t mean you might not have connections in other places, and so that’s really why we exist to be able to expand those opportunities. And the other thing is, as you know, the world is changing at breakneck speed. It’s really hard to keep up with what AI is driving in the semiconductor industry and a variety of different industries. It’s just changing too fast, and the world is is a dynamic place. We’re bringing it to people every day.

Speaker 2: 06:20
It is, and it is it is an interesting time to be a business owner, and maybe it always is, but it does seem like uh yeah, there’s a lot going on. So you guys are you’ve really been able, I’m guessing, to benefit being here. I know you’re global, but you have a headquarters here in in Scottsdale, Arizona, where you’re based anyway. And there’s been some really interesting stuff happening in Arizona. You mentioned semiconductors. I’ve been watching very closely as I drive to Flagstaff, you know, every couple weeks or months or whatever, passing by the humongous, probably one of the biggest construction projects on the planet, the uh TSMC semiconductor plant that’s been continued to build out there in the desert. But how have you been involved, or how is how’s global chamber been involved with that? Because I’d imagine that’s like perfect within your wheelhouse here for your organization.

Speaker: 07:12
Yeah, we have chapters in Taiwan. We have chapters in Japan and in other countries where semiconductors are important, like South Korea and really every country. There’s about 20 countries that are quite significant, and even this year we included Kenya in that list of countries that are involved with the semiconductor industry. So it’s it’s become a global phenomenon. So we’ve been involved from the Taiwan side. You know, Mayor Gallego and the state of Arizona were instrumental in connecting Arizona to this project. It is the largest foreign direct investment in history for the United States. And so what you see there growing on the desert is it’s historic. It’s driving all sorts of investment, not just in Phoenix, but because uh we’ve got industry folks coming in from all over the world. It’s driving investment in most of these key countries like Japan, like Taiwan, and all over the world. So it’s exciting. One of the things that we did start was the Global Chamber Semiconductor Summit five years ago, and that was largely driven by the Japanese government, who told us five plus years ago that, hey, we want to encourage Japanese companies to be involved in this investment in Arizona. So let’s set up a semiconductor summit at Global Chamber so that Japanese companies could come to see Arizona and begin to invest here and become part of the supply chain. So that’s what we’ve done. And we just actually did the last fifth one in February. We’ve got another event in October in San Francisco, and then we’ll, of course, do the sixth annual semiconductor summit next February in Phoenix as well. So those are some of the ways that we participate. It’s a very dynamic.

Speaker 2: 09:02
Yeah, you know, I’ve been trying to as much as I can, even though it’s a little outside of my industry, follow the news here just because of being a Phoenix resident. But yeah, I’ve seen the benefit of that. Like I think Fujifilm, one of the Japanese companies, you know, had to they’ve moved manufacturing here as one of the suppliers for the for uh the TSMC. And so yeah, it’s I don’t know if you know any numbers off the top of your head, but the ancillary businesses that have come, you know, just outside of that initial investment has been really fascinating to see across all of the Arizona, really.

Speaker: 09:35
There were a handful of Japanese companies five years ago in Arizona, and now there’s over a hundred. So the change has been dramatic. Similarly, there were almost no companies from Taiwan, and there are now dozens and approaching a hundred companies from Taiwan in Arizona. So that’s a really dramatic change in the last five years. One of the reasons why I started Global Chamber 10, 11 years ago was I saw nothing global in Arizona. There was relative to New York, relative to LA, relative to Tokyo, places where I’ve lived, there was no visible globalness. And I thought, gee, you know, Phoenix should have a global perspective. When we went through the downturn, the recession really turned into a depression for Arizona because we were so strip mall-oriented. So there should be some global aspect to be able to soften the blows when things turn up and down in this business cycles. Now with semiconductor and how it’s taken off, it’s hard to imagine us going through a downturn like what Arizona went through because being global, being connected to the semiconductor industry, Arizona’s going to withstand those uh ups and downs much better. And that was a lot of the reason why I thought global chamber was a good idea.

Speaker 2: 10:53
Well, very good reasons. And I mean, not like you guys were directly the reason why it’s here, but I mean it’s creating that environment that allowed for the semiconductor plant to be here in the first place. Because I personally benefited from all of these investments, even on a small scale. Like I travel to the Philippines to visit my office twice a year, and that’s not a that’s a long journey to get to, and I’m sure you know, your time in DuPont, you know, you’ve had assignments in Singapore and Asia. If you had to fly out of Phoenix, there’s a lot of extra steps that you had to take. Going through LA, going to San Francisco or some other Western hub, that’s not the case anymore. And I don’t know, I I don’t think people people realize like the impact that has on business and the new opportunities that that can create, having a direct route right into Asia from Phoenix.

Speaker: 11:42
10, 11 years ago, Phoenix was so behind on direct flights. You know, you had to go through LA or San Francisco or Denver, even Salt Lake had more direct flights than Phoenix. The city of Phoenix really struggled to get those because the business did not validate the need for that. They tried a couple things, it just didn’t work. The last five years, fundamentally, things have changed, and now there are direct flights, as you know, to Asia. And so Phoenix has become much greater hub to be able to do that, and the world has become a lot closer. Absolutely. Our focus really is not just supporting initiatives like the Direct Flights, what drives that is the business. What our focus is, is connecting anybody, including companies like yours, to these opportunities. One of the things that came up in the Semiconductor Summit this last uh few weeks ago, it was February 18th, Senator Kelly spoke at Global Chamber, and he encouraged all companies to become more involved with this supply chain overall, either directly or indirectly benefit from it. So we do have some initiatives we’ll be announcing in that area. And Senator Kelly, Mayor Gallego both spoke at our conference, and both of them have been tremendous leaders, not only to encourage the investment to happen, but now to get Arizona companies and companies overall to benefit from this great business uh change.

Speaker 2: 13:11
Yeah, I mean it it has been great to see Senator Kelly and their mayor here really advocate for that. I’ve been seeing that as well with like so like just take uh someone listening here today and they’re a business owner and they’re like, what business do I have? I’ll be honest, I I had the same feeling. You know, I’m a call center. What am I gonna do with a semiconductor plant? No one’s gonna call the TSMC for support on their chips. But you’re talking about a whole, like, as we’ve been discussing here, I’m like hundreds of suppliers, foreign companies all over. It’s not just doing business with the semiconductor plant. It’s a whole bunch of it’s a whole ecosystem. Talk to me a little bit more about that because I think people need to understand like uh why they need to be there because we need more people there, more business leaders connecting into this.

Speaker: 13:56
The rising tide raises all boats. And so to actually be a direct supplier of a product into the semiconductor industry, that’s a that’s a heavy pull. And those are specific companies that have expertise that most of the community doesn’t have. Nonetheless, there are all sorts of peripheral opportunities. And just one quick one that just came up actually today. I’m trying to think of which meeting it was in, but we were talking about Taiwan in particular. One of our members actually did a $59 million deal, a real estate deal, a commercial real estate deal with four Taiwanese companies on a piece of land in North Phoenix. And one of the things that really impressed him about Taiwan is the night market that’s available there. And there is no night market in Phoenix. And so he’s an American, but one of the things he was really quite uh energized about is we’ve got to find a way to have a night market in Phoenix. And so one of the things that international brings to any city is immigrants, and it brings people with ideas of their home market. And so one of the things that he was suggesting that we work on is let’s get a let’s get a night market, even if it’s a temporary one or periodic one or whatever it is, let’s get that done. So it’s there’s always benefit by having a global profile. One of our tag, or actually, our tagline is be global and unstoppable when you have a global mindset, not only exposure to different ideas, but expansive thinking about wow, this is happening. How do I get involved? And the creativity of yourself with others to be able to find the business opportunities is so important. So you ask, how can I benefit? How can I be involved? Just connect. Be part of not just the semiconductor summits, but the events that we do two or three times a month in Phoenix. We do over 800 events a year with Global Chamber. Get involved with the global tribe, and your mind starts to expand into how this can benefit you and your business.

Speaker 2: 16:02
Yeah. And I mean, I could say personally, I’ve definitely benefited as well from getting to be able to connect with other business owners here in Phoenix. Like I was uh speaking at a I did a talk recently and I was connecting with some other some of the other panel speakers that were marketing agency owners in town. And that’s, you know, you talk about like there’s always that phrase that’s so cliche, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. And for people like I think of people like me, I grew up in Phoenix. I did my parents blue-collar workers, I did not have the connections that some people have coming into this. And so if people are wanting, well, how I don’t know anybody, how do I run my business? Well, like I’m proof that it takes stuff like this, you know, go into events like this where there’s a bunch of people that you can connect with, and then it starts the ball rolling.

Speaker: 16:46
We have a as human beings, we have proximity bias. And that’s actually good when you’re crossing the street because you want to know what’s all around you so you don’t get run over. So proximity bias by historical means is something that we all definitely need. But unfortunately, in business, and I’ve seen this in my entire career, it does not encourage people to do global business. And in fact, even at multinationals, generally and historically, those who did global business were out of the loop. Because to get advanced in companies, you need to be close to people, you need to be at the water cooler, you need to get to know people at an intimate level. And if you’re doing global business, you’re traveling, you’re away from people. And so it’s quite the opposite of generally people that are global are not advancing like they should historically. They’re out of the loop, they’re different, they’re not us. And so it’s very important if you’re a global leader to certainly be aware of that. And also, ideally, your company or your comp more and more companies now are more aware that look, for us to survive, we need to be global. That’s where almost all the opportunity is. In any city where you are, over 99% of the opportunities are outside your own city. And so you’ve got to be culturally aware, you’ve got to be have presence in other places. It’s not easy. And that’s why Global Chamber is here to be able to help people through that transition. And we’re the global tribe. Global tribes know that, understand that, and are sensitive to that and are very supportive.

Speaker 2: 18:28
Yeah, and you’ve lived this life living on the road. I mean, I I when you tell those stories about not being connected and not being near the water cooler, I’m guessing that’s from personal experience while you’re spending a long time in Japan or or Singapore having to do work there, and then you’re coming back to the office trying to catch up. Because this is before all the Zoom days and all the, you know, we’re way a lot more connected than we were in the past. So that’s interesting that you had to go through that.

Speaker: 18:53
Well, even with those kind of video calls, as it turns out, like especially if you’re in Asia, you’re typically relegated to the midnight shift. Geneva is at lunch and the US is for breakfast. And you know, I spend many times midnight or after going home from a video conference. So but nonetheless, even cultural changes, like in Asia, generally Asians historically listen more than Americans and Europeans, and that can be detrimental in many ways. Culturally, Asians need to be more verbal and be able to interrupt because Americans tend to interrupt very aggressively. And you’ve probably seen that even between the Philippines and the US. Filipinos tend to be that way as well, more polite, more listening, waiting for things to happen so that they can be more uh kind of culturally, that’s the way it works. Japanese and Koreans tend to be that way as well. And so those are some of the things that make cross-cultural capabilities important as you’re expanding your business. That’s certainly part of the education process, and it’s part of the culture of global change.

Speaker 2: 20:04
Yeah. And, you know, you talk about education, and I think it’s such a big thing because a lot of business like that’s in a way that’s part of what you’re offering through the whole program is like, hey, we’re gonna, you’re gonna learn how to do global business. I know you guys put on workshops, you have people coming out to speak all the time, but you’ve also set up really amazing partnerships. Like I know the Thunderbird uh Global School of Management is I don’t know if you have any others, but it’s you guys have really gone, you know, it’s one thing to just organize people, it’s another thing to create these partnerships where you’re really looking beyond just those connections and how can we get these business owners equipped with the skills they need to be successful?

Speaker: 20:44
We we are built on connections and making the connections. And I’d say also, and I think that’s a great example. Thunderbird is an example of our partners. We are a welcoming community. It is one where people recognize that being global is more challenging than being local, that there are additional skill sets that are required and more sensitivity and mindfulness to be able to understand the cultures and to navigate that. So we are a welcoming community. And if there’s any messages that I would like to leave with everyone, is that number one is most of the opportunities that are available today are outside your community, outside your country. That means to be able to be aware of those things and to be able to navigate the business cultures to be able to be successful. There’s no other organization other than Global Chamber that does that. Every other organization is when there is an international conversation, it basically is a local organization talking about global. We’re the only one that connects in to Tokyo and to other places around the world to be able to make the connections to be successful. And so we’re very proud of that, and we’ve got a variety of. Of other things coming up, like a global portal, like Globe, which is an AI tool that allows members to connect in faster and better ways to connections and business deals around the world. So we’ve got more to come, and we’ve been able to make some decent progress so far as well.

Speaker 2: 22:18
Awesome. I wanted to touch a bit on AI. It’s one of the things we like to talk about on the show. And being in the position that you’re in, I’m really interested to hear your perspective on AI. One of the questions I like to ask people is we’re hearing so much about AI everywhere. And now you’re talking about also using it in your organization. We’re all, I think, you know, everybody, every business leader is having the same questions like, where do I put this? Where, where can we make the investment to get the biggest return? Because you could easily, just like anything in business, spend money and not see any results if you’re not targeting it in the right direction. So I don’t know. What what have you seen in either in your organization or in the marketplace? What are people doing with AI that’s really successful so that they could maybe focus in on part of their company that they could see some results?

Speaker: 23:09
So the the article that came out and blew up the internet a few weeks ago, something big is here or something big is happening. It’s here. It’s an amazing technology. Everyone needs to be implementing AI last year. And if you haven’t started, and if you’ve just kind of touched the surface, definitely jump in. It’s so critically important. It’s funny, Eric, that you’re you’re so connected to the Philippines. Our AI tool was developed in the Philippines as well. And so it happened, started happening about a year ago almost. And over the last year, we’ve been perfecting it and building it. And ironically, about six weeks ago, the development team in the Philippines started to say on a weekly basis in our weekly calls that something big is happening, that suddenly everything is changing at such a rapid pace. And then that article came out, something big is happening, that blew up the internet about two to three weeks after I’d gotten the early signal from our development team that development was happening so much faster because of the AI technology changes. And so we’re using AI to be able to connect members in faster and better ways to opportunities around the world. And I think it’s it’s hard to predict exactly how all of this is going to come together, but I do know that it’s changing at a faster pace than most of us can really grasp.

Speaker 2: 24:36
Yeah, that is for sure. Well, you’ve been through in your career big shifts in technology. And right now, you know, again, leaders are trying to think about where to invest, how much to invest. I really hope at this point it’s not if to invest or not. I think that that position, that time has passed. It’s uh, you know, and like you said, it should have been last year or maybe the year before.

Speaker: 24:55
Well, I will say that because you touch on a point of the speed of the changes. You mentioned about my five patents that I have. And those days I was at the experimental station for DuPont and I was working with brilliant people. I was a test case. They they were wondering, could they send an engineer in and get all of these brilliant research people to actually work on commercial products? That was kind of the basic idea. So I was just hanging out with really smart people. So I don’t think I really did anything brilliant myself. I just kind of hung around with really smart people. I had a computer that was a little more advanced than anybody else had in business because of being in central research. And I remember thinking, wow, I’m special, but the pace of what that computing capability was compared to what we’re going through today was child’s play. It really was. That was the beginning of the internet, that was in the mid-80s and the late 80s and the early 90s. It was just, it felt like it was fast, but what we’re going through today is is monumentally faster. So much, so much more. One of the things that was happening in that article about something big is happening, it was comparing the COVID impact on society versus what’s happening today. And COVID also, to some degree, is really child’s play in terms of the change in society that was happening then, was really evolving week to week. We weren’t really realizing what was fundamentally happening. It took months for us to really see it. And maybe for many people, it took years to really understand what the change was. It took a decade for people to really grasp what the internet was happening. It’s really a weekly thing, almost daily thing right now with AI. And so I don’t know what’s going to happen. I do know it’s happening at a breakneck speed and that we need to implement it immediately.

Speaker 2: 26:53
Yeah, definitely. Well, thank you for sharing that. Because uh, yeah, that’s the kind of perspective I was looking for. Like, what have you seen with the pace of change? And yeah, like I think people are not realizing how quickly this is changing. And it is like, this is actually exactly what I told my team in the Philippines about a year ago when I saw the impact it was having with the call centers. And I think for me, I’ve been able to benefit a little bit in being in the call center space where we see we see it coming faster than other people. You know, maybe your industry isn’t impacted as much by AI, and so you’re like, oh, put it off a little bit. I’ll get to that. Where for us, you know, it is it was taking jobs away already a couple years ago. And the things that you could do with it with uh a call center are so powerful. So we got into it early.

Speaker: 27:42
You know, here’s a guy who’s in Silicon Valley saying, Look, here I am. I’m the guy that’s telling you it’s changing everything here. It’s gonna hit you uh very soon. And so I view it as two aspects. One certainly is the challenge that we need to change, and the other is the opportunity. You know, where are things evolving? Where are things going? And I know the answer is global, and that’s why I think right now with Global Chamber, we’re well positioned to be able to help people navigate through what these opportunities are. And so we’ve evolved into certainly using Globe, which is our AI agent, to help members connect up with opportunities. And also we’ve got a variety of different market segment groups that are forming to be able to connect people to opportunities. We also have a portal launching on May 1st that allows people to connect up in better ways through AI. And so we’re we’re trying to stay ahead of it. I’m not sure we can be successful to really stay ahead. We’re just trying to really keep up and help our members keep up because it’s gonna be an exciting ride.

Speaker 2: 28:48
That is for sure. Uh, that’s you know why we’ve been jumping into it too and pivoting. Uh, we’ve been developing our own software, and I think that’s what companies need to do. And all right, uh, talk to me about this a little bit. So, you know, we’re a call center, and now we’re developing software that we’re gonna sell to companies that it’s gonna listen to calls, it’s gonna coach the agent to do better on the phones, but that’s a complete shift from our business. What have you seen? What are some examples of businesses you’ve seen being maybe part of the global chamber through your career that have made that shift? Because I think that’s something that a lot of companies need to look at doing to be successful in the future because new opportunities are gonna pop up that never happened before.

Speaker: 29:29
That’s absolutely true. I mean, it’s a complex situation to be able to come up with a technology and then enter a new market. And so I would say it usually comes down to talent. Do you have the ability to navigate and understand what the market is really calling for? Because what’s happening now is the markets are changing so fast. And so it’s used to be that you like there’s a market need, and that market need window is going to be long enough for you to be able to navigate and develop a product to be able to fit into it, even if you’re a new player. Now the market is changing so fast. And so to have the right people to be able to see these market needs and to be able to have a team that’s fast enough to be able to develop products in the time frame that’s necessary. It’s so critical. I do think it’s the market still is very much receptive to the things that you believe in, and that is ultimately you need talent that’s probably somewhere else that’s less expensive to be able to keep up. You need you need those people to be using the technologies to keep up, but you also need people to be able to think about these market needs. And so I think you’re in a great space to be able to do it.

Speaker 2: 30:47
Well, thanks. Yeah. I I this is one of the things like for us, we have clients in small towns some places sometimes, where they have a person answering the phones. And like, look, maybe you think you’re you might be some little company in the middle of America, but if you’re running a business and you’re having trouble answering the phones, you could tap into the global workforce right there very easily. And now you’ve become global. And that’s just one small way. But I think when I had my first startup, it was a transportation company, and I I wanted to disrupt the transportation industry, it was before Uber and everything. And I was working with a startup out of Germany that developed the software for dispatching. And I had suppliers in like different places, and I was just 26 years old, fresh out of like starting my first business. But I think I think people really need to challenge themselves. The business, like business is way more global than people realize, I think.

Speaker: 31:44
More and more. So just like Phoenix was very not global 10 years ago, the time frame has accelerated where it’s now becoming very global. And we’re talking about night markets, you know, in in Phoenix, which would have been a crazy idea 10 years ago. So so it is exciting, it is scary. And so I encourage every business, every leader to have some global aspect, even if it you’ve just traveled somewhere. Usually, most companies with their international work, it’s accidental that it happens initially. And so hopefully that may have already happened for you. And I encourage you to be proactive on the global side. And we’re happy to walk you through what necessary for the next steps. Awesome.

Speaker 2: 32:32
Yeah, I love all the resources you guys bring and to help business owners and that you’re all over the place. All those chapters means more than likely, wherever you’re listening to this podcast, there’s a chapter somewhere, at least in your country. And if not, possibly in your city. And then there’s events that you can get plugged into locally there, which is amazing.

Speaker: 32:52
We’re we’re happy to help and facilitate that. Like I said, normally what happens is there’s some sort of an accidental international sale. And then if that’s the case with you, think about how to turn it proactive. And we do have people who can help talk through that and how that works. And if you’ve got one or two countries where you’re selling, usually you’ve now got most of the compliance and requirements already set. So why not now take it to country number two, three, four, five, six? Once you’ve got the basic idea set, you can begin to expand beyond that. And that’s where really the opportunity is. You want to have in your business a portfolio of different countries, different regions, ideally different market segments, so that they, as they cycle, you’ve got a more steady stream of revenue coming in for your business.

Speaker 2: 33:43
Yeah. For us, like we definitely international, we have like 50% of our businesses overseas. So I could tell you during COVID, man, what a game changer for us. Just like how Arizona struggled so much in the 2008 recession, because we had everything was construction, everything was built around these industries that collapsed during the bad economy. But when things are bad in one place, doesn’t mean things are bad everywhere. And it definitely helped, it helps make your business so much stronger. So being able to tap into that. And going back to that, what you the things you don’t know, you know, you don’t know what you don’t know. It’s amazing the opportunities are out there globally. Like I was traveling last year in Sweden and Norway, and I didn’t realize like they I called the I called for a taxi and uh the people spoke English. I’m like, wait a second, like why am I not trying to target this market? But you know, it’s be but you get exposed to that kind of stuff when you’re here attending these kind of things, and you start to see, you know, what’s going on in other places, and how do you see that if you don’t ever get out? So this is one way to do that, even if you’re not traveling in person.

Speaker: 34:46
Definitely travel, you know. As recently with geopolitics, the pressure on immigration is quite high, but ultimately there’s nothing really gonna change that. One of the you mentioned Nelson Mandela in the beginning of the program. He’s been so inspirational for me. If you ever get a chance, read his autobiography. It’s I think it’s about 30 hours on audiobook, and that’s how long it took me to get through it. But he was so inspired in his early life, how in the region where he lived in South Africa, tribe by tribe, they would not allow marriage between the different tribes. Even though, I mean, for us, we look at the people, they look the same, but by tribes, they were not allowed to integrate. That’s the way human society, human history has evolved until people like Nelson Mandela said, look, you know, that’s not right. There is a global tribe. There are, we should be doing and thinking bigger than this. We should be connecting bigger than this. And that’s what really inspired me about his early life. And of course, there are many aspects of Nelson Mandela to be inspired by, but that’s certainly part of it that we don’t advance when we stick to our own tribe. We advance when we connect across. That’s where certainly challenges exist, but opportunities exist and we’ll progress faster when we do that.

Speaker 2: 36:12
And I have like 10 questions I want to ask you after what you just said to go into geopolitics and stuff, but not enough time to go into all of that. But it is really powerful what you just said about you by being connected to that global tribe, there’s that’s where like people need to understand that, you know, and I think it’s one of the fun things I get to help people experience when they start working with me, realizing because that that’s it’s funny. One of the biggest feedbacks I get when people start working with me because they’re used to working with what’s in their bubble. And they’re like, I had no idea this work ethic still existed in this world. That they just thought, like, this is the only kind of person I can get for this job, and that’s it. And no, there’s opportunities all over by connecting us, like that creates new opportunities. And I, you know, we I I wish I had more time to dig into some of the ideas I had on the questions here, but I appreciate you sharing that thought about this uh global tribe that we’re all in.

Speaker: 37:05
Yeah, people don’t know what they don’t know. Usually travel does unlock some aspect of it. Like, wow, that’s surprising. They do that here. I can’t believe it. That’s why immigrants are so important. It turns out there’s about 5% of U.S. businesses that are uh foreign-owned. 20% of U.S. exports are in those companies. So 5% of the companies, but they do 20% of the exporting. And exporting is so critical because that brings money back into the U.S. that builds roads and education. The reason why that’s the case is those 5% of companies, they’re from somewhere else. They know the world, they know the opportunities. And so they can then take products that are made here and bring them back to their markets. And so we want that. We want companies to own companies here in the United States or anywhere in the world. And by the way, there’s nothing that can be done to stop it. As Kofi Yann said, a stopping globalization is like arguing against the laws of gravity. You can argue against it. It’s gonna happen. Humans interchange with each other and suddenly globalization happens. And so it is happening. Global chamber is here to help facilitate.

Speaker 2: 38:20
Awesome. Well, I really appreciate the vision that you helped set up today for the listeners. You know, really, I think that people really need to realize that no matter what you are, there’s an opportunity to tap into the global marketplace for your business, either through new customers, suppliers, workforce. And it’s a complicated space, but people like Doug are out there to help make it make it easier because he’s lived that life for years. And uh, I mean, it is it is complex. The world’s a big place, but something like Global Chamber helps make it smaller and easier to get connected. Because there’s and I can’t wait to see the AI tools that you guys got are rolling out later this year to help me connect with more people. I’ll be definitely on that. Well, there’s one question we always ask all of our guests here to end the show and wrap up the show. And so I wanted to end with this. And so, Doug, for you, uh, with all that you’ve accomplished, I haven’t met, I’ve met a couple people with patents and never met someone with five patents. So that’s a new record. But with everything you’ve done with this and global chamber now and building it out to where you have what’s some unfinished business for you? What’s some things that you’re hoping to still accomplish in your life?

Speaker: 39:25
I I mentioned when I got my patents, it was really just hanging out with really smart people. One of the guys, Frank, uh, he had 83 patents. And I’ve I’ve actually was uh doing my work in the Cruthers building. He was the one that invented neoprene, and I’m very familiar with the the whole background of how Teflon was invented as well. So it was an amazing experience to be able to be exposed to inventors. Frank, by the way, he also he had calculated how his dish of water, when he washed his dishes, how fast the temperature changed so that he could reuse the water and just brilliant beyond any practicality. For me, I I hope that I’m a practical person. And my my vision is to go through and break through this proximity bias that I mentioned earlier. We are naturally siloing people, you know, and a lot of that is naturally good. Our nuclear family, our family, and staying together as a family. That’s a great, another great example of what proximity and the importance of it is. But because we do that, we get stuck in our alumni groups and our functional groups and our town and our chamber, local town chamber group. Again, all good things, but we carry it to the extent where we don’t break through. How do we break through to the next town, to the next state, to the next country, to the next function, to the next religion, to the next skin color, to the next anything? Global Chamber is the only organization in the world that breaks through all of that and says, look, it doesn’t matter. Just bring your talents and your skills and your mindfulness to the table. Let’s build something better, let’s make progress together. And so what for me is my driving force and what my legacy hopefully will be is that this guy’s created something that breaks through all of that and allows people to excel on a global scale, create new opportunities for their business and for themselves. And because it doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman or what your religion is or your skin color or where you’re from, you excel on the global marketplace because of what you want to do. And that’s what I want to be able to build across 605 chapters, 95 countries everywhere.

Speaker 2: 41:54
Woo! I got goosebumps from that. Thank you for sharing that, Doug. That’s an incredible vision that you have and hope for the future of the world. And you know, if we could all just do a little part to get us closer to that, I think that would be a great thing. So, well, thank you again so much. And for those people who listen and are like, I need to figure out more. How do I get plugged in the global chamber or connecting with you somehow? Where should they get plugged in?

Speaker: 42:20
Globalchamber.org. Uh it’s easy to come in, happy to help folks. Every day we’ve got uh folks coming into global chamber, connecting them to opportunities. It is a very welcoming organization. I I love the fact that when I see we do all these events, we do up to seven events a day, and I can’t go to all of them, but when I jump in to them and I see the caring that happens and the support that happens, it’s really encouraging. So I encourage, just jump into globalchamber.org and we’re happy to help.

Speaker 2: 42:52
Awesome. Well, go check that out, guys. We’ll have links in the show notes as well so you can find that really easily. And appreciate you guys listening. If you like what you heard today, you want to hear more amazing guests like Doug, please subscribe. You could follow us on any podcast channel, we’re also on any social media @BizWithEric, where you could follow us there. But thank you guys for watching and listening today, and uh, we’ll see you on the next episode. Bye, everybody.

Speaker 1: 43:23
CEOs and visionaries shaping what’s to come, building more than profit, lifting everyone, every path’s unique, but it takes a choice to grow. Set your goals and shape the way your future goes. And you’ll learn why. Subscribe look for this with Derek online and follow unfinished business on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, wherever you listen to the next one.