Todd Carswell: 0:00

This is the cluttered path, a compass for midlife. You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. That's a quote from Jim Rohn. He's an entrepreneur and an author and a motivational speaker for the 1980s. Now, he was a firm believer that people we surround ourselves with have a tremendous impact on our mindset, our behaviors, and our overall trajectory in life. Now, imagine starting life as a kid with absentee parents and surrounded by drug dealers. In most cases, that's a recipe for tragedy. But our guest today defied those odds. His name is Todd Coles. He's a man whose life was transformed from a high school dropout with no prospect to an architect in the world of data and AI. His story is a testament to the powerful influence of mentors and an unbreakable human spirit. But how did he break free from the chains of his past? Most people believe that success is an easy path just paved by privilege. But Todd's story reveals a different truth. Sometimes the most profound transformations come from the darkest places. Today, we're discussing how Todd turned his life around and the vital impact of surrounding himself with good people. Todd, welcome to the show.

Todd Cowles: 1:22

Yeah, thank you, Todd. I was just a little mesmerized just listening to you go through that. And as my father would say, um, show me your friends and I'll show you your future. That's the truth. I like it, man.

Todd Carswell: 1:34

Yeah, so would you mind introducing yourself to our listeners?

Todd Cowles: 1:37

Yeah, born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, lived in Indiana, Texas, Florida, Colorado, California. Yeah, so traveled around, graduated with my undergrad from Central Michigan, went on to do my masters at Boston University, and veteran, served in the Air Force, and have spent a long time originally in cleared environments, just working within and on cleared networks, and eventually stepping into the consulting space. In those cleared spaces, I learned VMware and I focused on it. And it sort of I rode that wave uh all the way into EMC where I was on a team uh called the Be Specialists. And like that was kind of our main mission to espouse the virtues of VMware with EMC. And from there, I that's where you and I met uh when I left EMC and came to Ironbow. And then you know, while we're at Ironbow, there was this thing called analytics. And again, no one was really focused on it. And I had done some of that stuff uh at Nora Northcom. We were using a product called Splunk, and this is before Splunk went uh went public. Again, pretty small company, small startup. Uh my undergrad was in sociology, but within that sociology, a lot of it was around quantitative methodology and testing, um, codifying questionnaires. So you know, you go out and gather data and do questionnaires, then you codify it. And uh at that time it was a product called uh SBSS, which IBM eventually went on to buy. And uh I went on to work at IBM, supporting SBSS as a data scientist, and that led to again another piece of software that was it was used heavily throughout uh the world, so to speak, but it was not something that someone would go to school for. And this was Apache Spark, and Spark being a big data analytics processing compute engine that was open sourced by a company called Databricks. And while at uh IBM, I got a job at Databricks and then came to Databricks, and I've been here now for a little over six years. So when I started at Databricks, there were 580 people uh working at the or having already worked at the company. I think there probably was closer to three to four hundred people actually employed by the time that I started here, and now we're at 12,000 employees worldwide, and I've had the opportunity to, yeah, it's been crazy. I've had the opportunity to consult to some of the largest companies in the world and still to this day get to work with them on their data and AI strategies and deploying the Databricks suite and working with other partners within the ecosystem. So it's just been this fantastic ride of you from high school, flunking out of high school, you know, fighting a lot of those demons, and then getting back in the saddle, so to speak, and continuing continuing to just try to push forward and I suppose make something of myself.

Todd Carswell: 4:40

Yeah, just background information here. Todd's a friend of mine, actually, and we work together at a company called Ironbow. Uh so we both work in the tech industry, and uh he said a couple of things there. One is cleared spaces, that's for either federal or department of defense, classified environments and things like that. Those are cleared spaces, but uh yeah, so we've got history together, man.

Todd Cowles: 5:01

Yeah, I dodged getting any, you know, I dodged getting a criminal record. And you know, when you go when you go into the military, one of you know, a lot of the I would say younger kids now, but uh when you would go in, if you didn't have if you didn't have a uh criminal record, there were good chances you were gonna get cleared, you're gonna start getting clearances. And that's what happened for me. So I was working on ATC communications and ended up at Travis Air Force Base, which Travis Air Force Base was part of WADS, which is the Western Area Defense. And this is post-9-11, so a year, maybe a year and a half post-9-11. And uh Travis was a location of F-16 launch for the entire Western seaboard. And I was part of the team that managed the the communications and fiber communications for those pilots. So you had to have some some specific clearances to be around the F-16s, and which then, you know, by the time I got to Ironbow, it was and even at EMC, because of those clearances, you know, I was able to consult into Area 51 and work on some of the Raptor stuff. And it was just it was it was an experience. It just was an experience, and I and I just never imagined that this sort of so to speak flunky from high school would would be in these situations.

Todd Carswell: 6:23

So you can't talk about it, but uh you got to see the aliens.

Todd Cowles: 6:27

I didn't I never saw any aliens. We we were on a different different side of it. You know, a lot of the Raptor uh drone program stuff was was beginning to originate out of that area because of Creech Air Force Base as well, which is right there.

Todd Carswell: 6:40

Yeah. Very cool, man. Yeah, good intro. So let's uh let's just dig into the questions now. Let's talk about your childhood. So you're born in Michigan. Now, what was your earliest memory as a child?

Todd Cowles: 6:52

My earliest memory as a child was seeing my my father smashed, uh standing at the entryway of our home, and my mother yelling at him and him just kind of standing there wavering. It was very it was winter time, and the lights from his Cadillac were cascading, you know, behind him into the garage and in the entryway, and there was just this bag of clothes and toys, and my dad just what am I supposed to do with the toys? And my mom just yelling at him and uh telling him to grab the bag and you know get the hell out of out of our lives. And and that really I would say that memory is a core memory, but it really set the stage for a lot of things that that were to become. And uh, in there's a cute name for kids like us in the 80s, they call them latchkey kids. There's a high degree of divorce that happened in the early 80s, and children oftentimes were were sent home from school by themselves, and so they would you know tie a key on a string around their neck, and that's how the latchkey name came from. So it just spent a lot of a lot of alone time. Uh no parents, you know, I would have been I was probably five, four or five at that time.

Todd Carswell: 8:08

Dude, I did not know this about you. I had the same thing. My parents got divorced. We were moving all over the place. I'm living up in Illinois, I'm in kindergarten, and I'm coming home like half days, and I'm coming home by myself, letting myself in and stuff. That was lonely, dude. Yeah. I remember that loneliness, bro.

Todd Cowles: 8:26

Yeah, and I don't think a lot of people know that kindergarten used to be a half day. You did AM kindergarten or P.M. kindergarten.

Todd Carswell: 8:33

Yeah. Yeah, just a lot of lonely. We lived in an apartment, dude, and it was just it was lonely, man. I'd all by myself in the apartment, man. Yeah. Sorry, I interrupted you. What were you saying?

Todd Cowles: 8:46

No, it's alright. I had an adventurous spirit, so you know, I'd get home and hop on my BMX bike and start start exploring, you know, go throughout the neighborhood, go hit other neighborhoods.

Todd Carswell: 8:56

Yeah.

Todd Cowles: 8:57

Yeah.

Todd Carswell: 8:57

That was a good part about the 80s, man. We we had bikes, we had transport, we we were able to we were mobile.

Todd Cowles: 9:04

Yeah, yeah. And I don't think human trafficking was was really uh a concern back then. It may have been going on, but um it just wasn't as much of a concern.

Todd Carswell: 9:15

Yeah. So now what what was your temperament as a child?

Todd Cowles: 9:20

High energy. I had a lot of energy. Uh uh, even you know, this is a middle school or elementary school still, and I've told my kids this story. I call it the gummy worm story, but very entrepreneurial. I would take my lunch money, and we uh they're 7-Eleven would be the same thing now. Back then, they were called magic markets, and I'd go and buy uh it was like three gummy worms for 10 cents. So I'd spend my my dollar ten on gummy worms, and then I'd turn around and come to school that morning and sell them for 10 cents a piece or three for 25 cents. And this went on for a few months until some parents you know finally uh contacted the school and said, Hey, my kids aren't eating lunch, they're buying gummy worms from some kid. Well, I would take that money and go buy baseball cards, which the baseball card shop was sort of kitty quarter from the uh the magic market. And so I just very entrepreneurial from a very young age, just kind of had that hustle. And I don't nothing was handed to me, even at a young age. And uh and I I I think I just if I wanted something, yeah, I had to work for it.

Todd Carswell: 10:31

Man, that's wild, dude. So now can you share any stories from childhood that maybe foreshadowed things to come in in later life?

Todd Cowles: 10:39

Yeah, well, that one right there, the entrepreneurial spirit, uh, the first time I smoked marijuana was fifth grade, and already had yeah, already had kids asking for marijuana by the eighth grade, and knew a couple people, older people that um were in my circle that were marijuana smokers and could get marijuana, and so I started buying marijuana from them and selling marijuana. And fifth grade? Well, by the time I was started selling it in like eighth grade, but fifth grade was the first time that I smoked it, yeah. Wow. Which I did you know, now everyone's like, you know, so it's you know, it's on every corner now. But back then it just it was unheard of. Oh that's unheard of for the 80s, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And uh uh just always kind of had that hustle though, just always just kind of driven, I suppose driven by money. It's it's changed now, still driven, but not from a not so much from a money perspective. Right.

Todd Carswell: 11:40

So what was this little Debbie snack cake heist?

Todd Cowles: 11:44

Yeah, so you know, the comment around, you know, show me your friends and I'll show you your future. These were kids I I was getting in a lot of trouble with, and you know, uh a name they'd they'd say be like, oh, they're juvenile delinquents. But we were more than juvenile delinquents, we we were criminals. And we were drinking some vodka in a neighborhood, just walking down the street, and there was a a little, so this would have been and 10th grade, I believe. We were uh walking down the street, and there's a little Debbie snack cake uh straight truck sitting on this 45-degree driveway, and and I said, Oh, I wonder if that's unlocked. And my buddies are like, Oh, it's never unlocked. We always check, and I run over there and and it's not locked, and I throw it up, and just cases of little Debbie snack cakes come down upon us. So we each grab a case, we run back to his house, and we steal his mom's car. We we probably make three, four, maybe five trips stuffing the car with cases of little Debbie snack cakes. This is a straight truck, like this is the guy's delivery truck. He's expecting to go to work the following morning, you know, delivering little Debbie snack cakes throughout Grand Rapids. And the uh the first trip we were making as we were walking back to his mom's house, we're like, oh, we're gonna need some soda. And two of the guys that were with us went into a garage to grab to steal a 12-pack of Coke that was sitting there. And the woman that lived at the house came out into the garage right then and there, and you know, we all took off running. Well, one of those two kids had already been processed through the system. So when the so I'll get back to this in a second, uh, we make five or six trips, then one of the kids' older brother makes one trip with us, and he was 18 at the time. And so now go back to this detective, he's he's on the case. And it was um, as he shared with me when the detective was sitting at at my kitchen table, that kid that had been processed uh led him to everyone else, and then eventually to this 18-year-old individual that was involved one time, and we ended up stealing the cost. So the the cost of these little Debbie snack cakes, $18,000 with worth of little Debbie snack cakes. I was gonna say, like what, $50? No, yeah. I mean, for those that don't know, little Debbie snack cakes were 89 cents and 99 cents you know for a retail price. So for that to be you know $18,000 worth, you're probably thinking 30 cents a box. Um yeah, I don't even know how many, maybe 24 per case. I don't remember. But it's uh all of us got off because he was 18 and he got stuck with the restitution. And that was the closest I ever came. And and I learned a valuable lesson. You know, don't steal with your friends if you're gonna do it, do it by yourself.

Todd Carswell: 14:40

Nobody's gonna fess up.

Todd Cowles: 14:41

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Loose lips sink ships, as they say.

Todd Carswell: 14:45

Oh man, dude, that is wild, man. That's a lot of snack cakes, though, man.

Todd Cowles: 14:50

It is. We do a party, sold off a lot of them. And then I, you know, I was an early porch pirate. Yeah, I was stealing people's packages off their porches, and I would sell it. Like I um I remember uh there was one gentleman that he worked for some corporation, but he always would get corporate gifts like to give to his customers, and I'd steal them. They'd be like mugs, zippo lighters. That was the big score that I got of zippo lighters, and it was maybe 200 zippo lighters with the company's insignia on them, and I was selling them for like 10 bucks a piece, and yeah, you're making it out. Yeah, made out. I'm still in high school, I'm young at that, you know. I'm that was maybe eighth or ninth grade at that point.

Todd Carswell: 15:35

Wow. Dude, that is wild, man. The snack cake heist.

Todd Cowles: 15:39

Yeah, the snack cake heist. Yeah.

Todd Carswell: 15:42

So uh now how was your relationship with your parents?

Todd Cowles: 15:46

Not good. It just it would never was good. It never I think because of the lack of presence in my life, it just they weren't there for the permittive like bonding years, so to speak. Your parents divorced, my dad, you know, had a handful of different wives, and he lived on the other side of town, and my mom, you know, she worked and would get home 7 30, 8 o'clock at night and just spent. She's got two kids. It just, you know, my older sister and I. And um the weekends, you know, she was always just kind of looking for ways to get rid of us so she could have some time to herself. So I I it just wasn't good. I I mean, I you know, I didn't have role models around me. I didn't have there there really weren't parents or anything that well, I wasn't allowed in a lot of kids' homes. That's I was the one kid that yeah, they just they wouldn't allow me in the house. And I and rightfully so. Like I was kind of crazy, I was wild, again, high energy, something might come up missing, you know, I might steal something. Yeah. Yeah. Dude.

Todd Carswell: 16:54

So not good. Yeah, and I and that back then there was like this stigma around divorce too, in a lot of cases. Yeah. So oh, he's from a broken home. Watch out for that kid.

Todd Cowles: 17:04

So yeah, well, and it's I mean, it was true, and the other kids that that it uh I knew that were from broken homes, they were just as much of a degenerate as I was, most of them.

Todd Carswell: 17:17

Yeah. Yeah, that's rough, dude. So any happy memories from childhood?

Todd Cowles: 17:21

I had a lot of fun. I mean, it you know, that that's a lot of excitement for a young kid to to be doing that type of stuff. And uh no, I I mean I I think even going through high school, I was, you know, teachers, the institution so to speak, itself expected me to fail, spoke of me in in terms of um failing and a failure. And I and I flunked out of the tenth grade and got sent to a private school and sort of had to crawl my way back. But uh there just was there wasn't a whole lot of happiness in when when I was growing up. I I think generally though I was a happy kid, but looking back on it now, having you know to do to work through a lot of the trauma and and and that, you just look at it and it's like, man, that was not that was not a happy experience. But I think at the core of who I am as a man, I I I'm a happy person. I generally don't focus on negative things. If something negative happens, it very quickly you know, I start looking at the silver lining, the upside, you know, what is my next step? I don't rotate and and my internal voice doesn't really fixate on negative negative or negative stuff. Right, right.

Todd Carswell: 18:35

So what were you into in high school then?

Todd Cowles: 18:38

Sports and stuff or what I yeah, the only time I didn't get in trouble usually was when I was playing hockey. And you know, that was only a few months out of the year. But even then it was, you know, it's kind of on the bad news bears travel team, and it's just you know, it's just there are other degenerates on the team as well. I mean, hockey wasn't as expensive as it is today. It wasn't I mean, we traveled, but it wasn't like what travel sports are today. And uh you know, played hockey, but really just was I think already uh in a very specific path and pattern w which uh d didn't provide for like upside, you know, post-high school. And I'm tracking. Yeah, and it's um there was a there was a gentleman that uh he and I were at one another's throats and he was another drug dealer. And uh after I had gotten back, uh so it's the I had to sign a document with the assistant principal who was had been my principal since middle school, so he'd known me for a long time at this point. My dad you know brought me in there and and his name was Mr. Blackford, and and uh Mr. Blackford says, Okay, Todd, you've you know, I've known you for a very long time and and I expect a lot out of you and and you know, the drugs, the fighting, all the previous stuff, you know, that's done now. It's done. You sign this document, it's done. Yes, sir, yeah, absolutely. And what I learned was you you have to create a good cover story if you're gonna do that stuff. And and I did. Uh, you know, I got into um at the time Nancy Reagan had the DARE program. So I'd go into middle schools and elementary schools and talk about the hazards and dangers of drugs while I'm back at my old private school in the parking lot selling drugs to these private school kids. Oh yeah, yeah. And it just, you know, you build a better cover story. I delivered pizzas and I deliver, you know, drugs as I'm out, you know, driving around pizza. So I had money because I worked, but I always always had a lot more money than you know what I'd be making from from the you know, delivering schlepping pizzas.

Todd Carswell: 20:51

So you're like, hey, that's that's Parmesan cheese. I mean, what? Yeah. It's a regano.

Todd Cowles: 20:56

I mean, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and it just um I think you learn a lot. I think that's one of the things about life is that sometimes you have to build somewhat of a chameleon type character to get through stuff, whatever the reasons may be, whether it's trauma, whether it's um you know people don't believe in you. Uh back to the story uh with this um fellow drug dealer. I I thought so then I come back to school on that first day, and I and he rounds the corner. And this is a you know, a school, so there's an entirely separate freshman wing, you know, sophomore juniors and seniors are in their own separate high school. So a lot of a lot of students, I think there's five or six hundred kids that graduated in my class. And he rounds the corner, and and I just think to myself, all right, well, this is this is it. Like I, you know, I have no problem I have no problem fighting, none whatsoever. And that's it. I got into a lot of fights as a kid. And I handed a friend of mine was walking with me, and I took my backpack off, I handed it to him. I was like, here we go. And the first thing he did was he stuck his hand out, which really threw me off. And he just said, Todd, you know, I want you to know there's no static between us. I want you to come meet uh this lady Jay uh for a leadership uh seminar she's putting on. She runs the United Way program here at the school. She's the volunteer coordinator. I I really think you you should you should meet her and in and check out what she's doing. And I did. And that you know really opened up my eyes. There was, I remember that there was a you um this exercise that we did, and there was five or six of us sitting at the table, and you couldn't speak. That was part you like could not speak. You had to read the directions, and there was something you had to do together as a team. And I read it and was like, and just started directing everyone, and and we finished the project. And she you know came over to me afterwards and just engaged me, and it really started this relationship where I really started to heal through the process of volunteering and serving other people, and and my relationship with her, and then eventually her family and her husband, and uh they stepped in. I mean, it was the first time that I felt loved in my entire life. I was 16 or 17 at by this time, and it's you know, my they're angels to me because there was no one in my path that was gonna provide positive reinforcement, provide positive input uh for me to go on to that next stage of my life. And and to this day, they're still critical in my success in my life, and so them as mentors, and um it's just been everything to me. And they're and they're so deflective about stuff like that, they're so humble. Uh the husband Jack, retired UPS driver, one of the greatest dudes in the world, and and she was a volunteer coordinator, and she spent her entire life and still spends her life serving people. Interestingly, is that uh four? I might be getting this number wrong, but four of her children of the five went on to get Division I scholarships in athletics. I mean, just beasts of athletes, and she ended up suing the state of Michigan, Title 18, I think it is, for equality for women's sports, because at that time the women's sports teams always had the worst practice times, always uh had to defer to the men's teams for you know the arenas and pools and that stuff. So brought about equality in that fashion. Yeah she was always she spent her entire life serving people, and that was a really, really good lesson for me to witness to start to learn, and it it opened up the door for me because uh when I was graduating from high school, which when I graduated from high school, my GPA was 2.33. And uh when I came back as a junior, because I had to repeat 10th grade, so when I got sent away, I was repeating 10th grade. I think I came back, my GPA was 1.7. It's like yeah, you needed, I think, a 2.0 to graduate. And uh Holy Cross, which is in South Bend, Indiana, uh, they had a something called the conditional acceptance program where they would take you in and you had to go during the summers when your classes started. So that program started four days after I graduated from high school. But the lead nun of the of the school contacted Jay and had about an hour and a half discussion, and they took a huge risk on me. And it but it it opened up everything in the importance of education and in learning, the process of the learning. And I think that's what I think that's what college is about. It's you know, I'm getting a degree in biology, I'm going pre-med, I'm going pre-law, I'm you know, I'm going computer science. Really, it is it's it's a development prop process to help you understand what a litmus is and what the litmus looks like for things you're looking at, information you're interpreting, and to start to open you up to a career field that that you might be interested in. And for me, it was just about learning. You know, I would go, I didn't have any friends when I was down there. So the Holy Cross students at the time had unabridged access to the Notre Dame campus. And it's it was if you wanted to go to Notre Dame, you could do two years at Holy Cross, and your chances of getting into Notre Dame, provided you perform at No at Holy Cross, were pretty good. Because all the brothers of Notre Dame taught at Holy Cross. So there's this whole kind of connection between the two schools. Nice. Way beyond the movie Rudy. Like that's most most people attribute it to Rudy. But there's there's this huge connection between the two schools. And uh I would go to the library and I would just pick a floor, and then I'd walk, it just almost seemed like miles and miles and miles of book, book rows, sort of dimly lit, no one in there, and I would just walk down an aisle, pull a book out, and start reading. And it just it was just this like I was like, man, all this knowledge is at my fingertips. You know, part of me is like, why didn't I do this when I was in high school? But it it it just became the process of learning, the um the challenge that it that it puts in front of you. It just it kind of it opened up a whole new world to me. That wasn't I I wasn't aware of you know prior to nice.

Todd Carswell: 27:24

Dude, that is tight, man. So that was uh an eventful childhood. So let's uh let's switch over to talk about college. Can you talk about your college experience?

Todd Cowles: 27:33

Yeah, it's uh it was great. I really enjoyed college, and so much so that I I did five years of it. And uh it it was you know, back to the entrepreneurial entrepreneurial stuff. I started a student newspaper that was uh I used as a tool to to bring and highlight some of the violence that was happening within the f fraternity system. Got a fraternity s fraternity kicked off of campus, and that led to numerous fraternities being removed and for sexual assault. And and I again I was um it sort of was a hard charger, like you know, the pen is mightier mightier than the sword, so to speak, and uh loved research, loved uh loved math, you know, just trigonometry. I I I didn't do calculus uh at that point I hadn't done calculus, but I was doing a lot of you know algebra, trigonometry, and then all my stats stuff, and would use a lot of that learning and understanding within the articles that I was pub publishing, and it really like the quantitative aspects of data. So this is you know really generating data for analysis and learning how to do that essentially by hand and then building out a testing methodology within a piece of software was it foreshadowed everything that was gonna come. Like I couldn't see it back then because really going into the Air Force, my brother was in the Air Force, it was my only option. And and I think that's you know, these types of opportunities at the time don't don't seem like it's like it's this isn't what I want to do, but it's the only thing I can do. But in reality, in the rear view, you look at it and you go, that's literally what needed to happen in my life because it again opened up another world of opportunities for me. You know, and really it's like getting my you know two things out of that uh from college. Uh I didn't go in as an officer. I wanted to become an officer, but I still had uh I had been in college for so long that um I no longer could get uh financial student aid. There's a there's a window that you can get in. I think it's five years, it's like after that, you can't, we're not giving you any more money, kid. Right. And uh I was able, you know, the Air Force, the program that I was going into, because I had pretty much all electives left to get my college degree. The Air Force program that I was going into was gonna uh take up most of those. I had to take one class, like a 300-level writing class that I was able to do essentially online uh when I was out in California. So it helped me finish that last semester of college. It gave me these government clearances that I later would end up using in my IT career, and it gave me $50, some odd thousand dollars for my master's, you know, the GI bill, which at the time I was like, I am never going back to school again. I'm so done. But then, you know, there I was. And I it also um you know, I I spent about I spent a year and a half in Iraq uh working in an environment out there, and that exposed me to people that would then contribute to my success at Boston University. So I start to look at you know this path that I've walked, and it really comes down to you know these mentors in entering into my life and and uh you know having a mentor or finding someone that can be your mentor, it I a lot more of it has to do with how you're gonna receive it. You know, sometimes they're not gonna, you know, maybe in movies, you know, it's like they put their arm around you and they're all, hey buddy, you know, it's I got you, and that's not what it is at all. It's a lot of times it's for you to sit there and listen. You know, listen to them, share their experiences, listen to them because what they're speaking about is wisdom. And you can take that and ply it in your own life. You know, in Iraq, I was doing support for the LNO cell, which uh was the lead cell for the special operations, and you know, they would build packages, uh, give them to Petraeus, and Petraeus would, you know, authorize the target, that sort of stuff. And I remember sitting there and uh uh Colonel Miller was his name. He he had applied for his first star, and and I'm sitting next to him, and he and I come in, and these guys were great. And I didn't do anything high speed for them. I I basically I ran I ran the movie servers because I worked in the server room. I ran the movie servers, so I kind of was a big deal because I was the one that would move the network, move it around the network from scans and all this stuff, and then give be able to give access and provision access to people. So these these guys are going out uh in you know, far out into FOBS, and you know, they don't have anything other than movies in email, and I was able to solve a couple problems from them around that, and and so it it endeared me to them, and I ended up living with them, and it was just great. It was a that aspect of Iraq was different, and and it really um not everyone had that experience. Wow. Uh but um you know he gets his letter from Congress and he's like, you know, do you want to open it? I was like, okay. And I sat there and the general? This is the guy that the colonel started at the time. Yeah, yeah, he put in first star. And he's asked, dude, do you want to open this letter for me?

Todd Carswell: 33:03

Yeah, yeah. That's cool, man.

Todd Cowles: 33:05

Yeah, and uh and I and I just said, you know, congratulations, sir. You're you're brigadier select. And he went on to get I don't know if he ended up I he went on to um lieutenant general um on the spec in the spec ops arena. Um I don't know if he got his third. Wow, but that relationship, and now again, now I graduated from central Michigan with like a 2-7. Again, not stellar studies, nothing, you know, nothing spectacular. Hey, C's get degrees, baby. This is true, but they don't get you into grad school. And uh he wrote my letter of recommendation to Boston University. So now you have two or three-star writing your letter of recommendation, you know, to to a program at BU. And it was all online, but back this is 2015. Online schools were not what they are today. And I, you know, I I do have to highlight the BU program. It was not for the faint of heart. I remember one class, uh, the quantitative, one of the quantitative methodologies class, which is calculus, graduate level calculus. I mean, calculus is calculus, but that's hard, you know, at a graduate level, and I was way over my ski tips. But there was 30 or 40 students at the start. There was like 11, you know, after the second week. You know, it went down even more. And it just, you know, it was one of those get rid of the get rid of the kids that that can't hack it or whatever classes. But it's um again, I look at that and it's just like, you know, these people have been put into my life to open up doors, and and I've learned a lot from them, and I'm indebted to them. And it's just um again, just this dropout druggie from you know, Kentwood, Michigan, that here I am, you know, three-star general writing my letter of recommendation to BU. Like this was not supposed to be my life, but it is my life. And it's um it's a life I manufactured. And I think that's really important to call out is that though doors can open for you, you have to be receptive to those doors opening, and you have to recognize it that they're opening and and have the courage to step through, step through them. And and it's still, you know, even today, you know, my career at Databricks, it's it's always having the courage to step through the threshold, to take on the responsibility of, you know, I consult to McDonald's's, I've been consulting to them now for a couple years and working with a lot of their teams, Molson Core, Sheets, um, our DoD side of the house, that's I got hired in to support our DOD uh team. But, you know, having the courage to step into that threshold, there's a lot of times I don't know the answers. I just don't know. But having the responsibility for yourself and having the courage to step in thinking that I am gonna find the answer. I don't have the answer right now, but I will find the answer. And I think it's that type of attitude can can carry you. It can carry you a long way. Because it's it goes back to like your thirst for knowledge, your your thirst for understanding. It's um it falls back into those trappings that you're gonna spend the time to understand the problem properly, you're gonna spend the time to seek out the necessary resources, and if you need help, you you solicit that help.

Todd Carswell: 36:26

Yeah. A lot of people, I mean what I've seen in the tech industry is a lot of people they get presented with something, and then they say, Oh, I can't do it because I need to go get a month's worth of training. So that's what they ask their boss for, and then and then it just it's like, no, then they just go find someone that'll do it, learn on their own and stuff. So you gotta take the initiative, man.

Todd Cowles: 36:46

Yeah.

Todd Carswell: 36:47

My first manager left behind. Go ahead.

Todd Cowles: 36:50

My first manager at Databricks, he, you know, again, there's three or four hundred people at the company at that time, and there was something, I don't remember what it was, but I I just said, Man, I don't I don't really know. I don't even know where to start. And he just said to me, If not you, who? Yes. I said, I and I said, I'll figure it out. And I did, I eventually did. And you have to be okay with not knowing. There's my colleagues, I mean, these are individuals that have PhDs, they have uh masters, they I mean they're the cream of the crop when it comes to data and AI, and just being around them is I don't view myself that way, I view them that way. And a lot of times I'm in listen mode because they're really smart. And it it's I'd rather listen and learn than I just think that's a good position to be in. Uh, I had a colleague when I first started, I was talking to him, and and I said, you know, what what were you doing before you came here? He goes, Oh, I was an astrophysicist. I was like, What? He goes, Well, I was in academia teaching you know astrophysics, and and and I just thought, were you like a rocket scientist? He goes, actually. Yeah. And so here he is working in the same role that I am at Databricks. And you know, that really opened my eyes to the company and in what we were doing and in the mission set and things we were achieving. And it it speaks to really back to Apache Spark and what Apache Spark was doing before Databricks became Databricks. It was solving a huge issue within the data and data and analytics space and processing of big data.

Todd Carswell: 38:32

Dude, that's tight, man. So let yeah, let's close out the thing on Iraq. So you you talked about the good experiences, but any negatives coming out of Iraq?

Todd Cowles: 38:40

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I spent years, and and I want to be clear that I I never went outside the wire. Uh but Camp Victory, at least there in Baghdad, was really big. It was like five or six bases. Camp Victory was Saddam Hussein's Saddam Hussein's palace in the surrounding vicinity. Then there was like uh Stryker and I can't remember the names of the others, but those were kind of on a perimeter. And we got attacked a lot, and so uh I got the nickname Flash Gordon. I just always seemed to be, I always seemed to be out in the open when we would be getting attacked. And uh one day I was I was walking home with my manager, he was five or six steps ahead of me, and we started taking incoming. I was carrying a work laptop with me, and the zipper uh, you know, was at the you know, at the end, he was on my left side, and I had it slung over my shoulder this way, and I just shot past him to get to a bunker, and he shows up like 10 seconds later, coughing, puffing, and he's like holding his elbow, and he's like, dude, it's like you're Flash Gordon because you ran by me so fast, your laptop bag zipper cut my elbow. I mean, he shows it to me. He's like a slice on him.

Todd Carswell: 39:57

Oh, that's funny.

Todd Cowles: 39:58

Yeah, but we got we got attacked a lot. So where I where the SF team was stationed um in vicinity to everything else, um, was Route Irish, which uh when I was there, so Baghdad became the murder capital of the world while I was there, but then Rao Irish, there was a Iraqi police post just on the other side, and yeah, I mean, every night you just hear hear the 50 cal just start lighting up, you know, and attacks and and it just it took a long time to deal with the PTSD. I mean, there were times when I was living in Colorado Springs, I remember I'd just I'd come to uh in the middle of the night, I'd I'd come to, I'd be in the middle of my hallway on the ground with my nine millimeter on the phone with 911, and like would just kind of come back into existence almost, and I would hear the operator going, It's okay, sir, it's okay. You know, this happens all the time. And I'd be talking about there's a gunfight, I'm armed, I'm ready. It just and those types of things just they're really damaging to the brain, and it took a long time, you know, very a lot of aggression, a lot of anger, uh, which I'm a happy person. My default uh before I went was you know, happy, and I still am, but um it just took a long time to heal and to get through that stuff. And my friends too, I mean, guys that I still speak with uh that were over there with me. I mean, same thing for them. Just I was just um they have the CRAM, this device. So the C RAM is they design for boats. Um, it's you know, it has azimuth, tracks things. So uh incoming objects, the C RAM tracks it, fires depleted uranium shells in its path, and it has a time detonation on it, and it they explode in the path of the of the incoming, which if it has a GPS circuit, it's gonna short circuit it. And that's the principle behind it. They have them throughout they had them throughout uh Camp Victory because that's where Petraeus lived was on Camp Victory. And where I worked in uh I worked in the palace, so the server rooms and the cleared spaces were deep, deep in sort of the analys of the palace. And uh I was working nights, and the palace is the it's this long bridge. Like there's sentries, uh, there's a sentry point to get onto the bridge, and then the bridge is I don't know how long, 100 yards, maybe a little bit longer. And it's um Saddam Hussein, he had depleted the entire farmlands within Iraq to build his palace lakes. These weren't ponds, these were lakes. So Iraq used to be green, and he circumvented all that that water to build his lakes throughout his palace grounds.

Todd Carswell: 42:50

Whoa.

Todd Cowles: 42:50

Beyond palatial. Like it was difficult to understand. Like he had different palaces that he would visit within his palace kingdom, so to speak. You know, his sons had their own palace, and all of them had massive lakes because he was a big sportsman. Uh back again where the SF, where we were, um, he had a skeet shooting uh trap zone right there. So it was like it's just crazy. Um so but anyway, he stocked these lakes with snook. He was a big snook fisherman uh in arapimas, which if you don't know what an air arapima is, after this you can Google that. I mean, they're vicious fish, but they're also a protected species. And he had maybe 50 to 100 of them in this main main lake that surrounded the palace. And all of us, Chow Hall was on the other side of that sentry point, and when we'd be coming back from like breakfast, lunch, or dinner, the fish would start kind of pulling up, and you'd throw apples, uh, fruit loops, whatever these I mean, these fish were six feet long. And um night I'm heading headed to um Night Chow and um The sirens start going off and for incoming. And the incoming sirens, there's a geometry associated with it. That there's you know what they're doing is that they, if this siren's going off, it's within you know a circular radius that it's predicted to land. And uh they started going off, and I was maybe middle of the bridge, and they had this saying, you know, put your dick in the dirt. That's what they told us when we were going in. And um it's you know, if you're laying down on the ground and there's a blast, if it doesn't hit you right in the middle of the crack, you're gonna live, and it's a 45 degree blast radius that comes off of it. So if you're laying down, it goes this way, right? If you're standing up, you're gonna get you're gonna get cut in half. And sirens go off, hit the deck, and the CRAM starts firing. And I look up, and there's a perfect capital J just hovering right over my head, which that means it is this is where the incoming's coming. It it tracked it right over my head and a perfect capital J. And I'd never seen that before. I'd seen it fire numerous times. I'd been around when it fired perfect capital J. And inside my head, I just heard this voice just go run. And I got up and I started running, and everything started to explode around me. There was the one time in my life I beat a brother in a race. He peeled, he peeled off and went to the right, and I kept heading straight towards the palace, which you know, Saddam Hussein's palace, this is his um entrance in um receiving uh courtyard, so to speak, for dignitaries. And it was someone had told me it was the most expensive onyx in the world. It had been mined from Italy. It was this deep black with this very iridescent aqua veining throughout it. So the entire parquet floor was made of it, and then the front fascia of the palace was made of it as well, and it probably shot up, I don't know, 150 feet. I mean, it just was opulent, and it had um concrete barriers, so you know you couldn't drive onto it or anything. Everything's exploding, and I can hear the shrapnel hitting the concrete, ricocheting, and everything's orange, so that whole parquet lights up orange, and I can feel the heat from everything exploding on the back of my neck, and like a scene out of Jason Bourne. I I just crest over these barriers running, and I make it to the entrance, and there's uh 10, maybe 15 uniform people there, they start touching me. And the last there was this um Filipino Marine, you know, it was maybe five, six, five, seven. He's he just puts his hand on my chest and he says, God is with you. And I said, I know. Yeah, and I and I just said I know. And and it really brought back into focus, you know, and I and I call that the Jay story because it really, you know, I've come to know that that was Jesus protecting me. And God said, get up and run. I mean, I probably would, I mean, I would I would have taken one to the to the keister had I had I stayed there. So it just from from that, you know, kind of demarcates my life at that point that you know, going through what I went through growing up, you know, coming uh through that experience, you know, you really start to feel that you're meant for something. And to me now, as a single father, you my job as a single father has been to become the father that I didn't have and uh to slay, so to speak, a lot of those generational curses uh that my father put in front of me. He was an alcoholic, he wasn't present, and when he was in the same room with me, he just you know hung over, wasn't a mean drunk, but he he just he wasn't present and um didn't take a leadership uh life in my role or uh aspect a role in my life, and and with my children, it's excuse me, it's the exact opposite of that. That you know, I do things to become the father that I didn't have. And and I think that you know goes all the way back to that Jay that Jay story and starts to propel me forward into where I'm at now. Right. So you're a man of faith as well. So that's yeah, good to hear about it. That it didn't that didn't do it. Uh I there were other I I think you to me a relationship with Jesus is about learning how to love yourself, which in turn, you know, you love your neighbor. And those are the types of teachings that I started to predicate my life on. And and really, I mean it is for me, you know, to establish my boundaries, uh, respect for myself. And when people violate those boundaries, it's like, look, you know, we don't we we don't need to do this. There's no reason to for us to be around one another. It's all good. Like it's there's no hate here.

Todd Carswell: 48:54

Yeah, and um and it's interesting how that you say that, learning to love yourself, because you and I have uh I'll talk to you more about uh offline, but we've got some parallel paths here, man. Yeah, I've learned now later in life from a psychologist that when your family breaks up and you're a little kid, it's like death to you. So you just it just feels like death and you feel like it's your fault. And so then for the rest of your life, until you can get some help with it, you really hate yourself. There's this self-loathing that takes place. And yeah, dude. So it's interesting that you say that, learning to love yourself, because uh yeah.

Todd Cowles: 49:37

Well, I think as a young man, it it kind of comes off as like a peacocking aspect of whatever you're doing. Um, arrogance, um you know, you just you don't have the wisdom to understand that you know what you're investing in is is is of low value, and a lot of it you're investing in it because you don't understand your value. And again, you know, back to Jesus and you know his gospels, you know, understanding what he was expecting of us, you know, serving one another, loving your neighbor, and those are the things that really help reinforce love for yourself and learning how to love yourself is a long process, especially coming from a trauma background. It just you don't feel like you're worthy of it. You don't feel that people should be investing in you. And I mean, all those things to get through it is I mean, it's it's a it's a journey. It is a journey. For me, one of the most helpful things that happened was that I spent a lot of time visioning in my head me as this man that I am today, going back to the young boy that I was back then. I mean, just visualizing my house, the front door, where I would have been standing, visualizing me as a young boy looking up at me as a man, and me as a man looking at the young boy and just saying, it's going to be okay. You are going to make it. You know, and it just I mean, all those things, yeah.

Todd Carswell: 51:03

It it's um we have not talked about this beforehand. I'm being taken through the same stuff, dude. That stuff is so helpful, man. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but no, you don't.

Todd Cowles: 51:15

It's it's it's um got a little choked up when you think about it because it's deep. It's deep. You're like you you're a father, and it's just like you have um you have this different marrow about you know, internally when you have children, and especially a son and daughter too, that your love is really deep. And your love is deep in you know, when you're thinking about yourself as this young boy, it's it's like your love is going back in time and extending that love back to that young boy, saying it's gonna be okay, you're gonna be supported, it's gonna be okay. And you can't see that, you just can't see it when you're that young age. And I don't I mean, I and I know God has a larger purpose for me, and and I think I'm living that purpose. I I think you know, it doesn't mean I was gonna become a great CEO of you know a startup that I that I had, it doesn't mean any of that stuff. It means that I've been given the opportunity to reinvest in my children like my father did not invest in them. So it's really a healing process as well, except when I'm yelling at them. Sometimes these kids, man, it's it's like it's like, do you know what I had to go through to do this? Like, you know, it's like, no, they don't. They don't have any idea. You're yelling at yourself right now, they're not even listening to you.

Todd Carswell: 52:36

That's so right, man. Yeah. I've been there, dude. So yeah, yeah, this psychologist that uh I'm working with, he he talks about reparenting. So the stuff you're talking about, yeah, man, you're going back and working with that five-year-old self that's hurting. Is that what it's called?

Todd Cowles: 52:52

Reparenting?

Todd Carswell: 52:53

That's one of the words he used. And uh I've I've read it in other places as well, but that it's a word that they use. But uh, it's it's so true. You have to dude, I'm getting tangly just thinking about it because when I go back and remember some, you know, some negative memories, or if I'm having a negative response to something now, there is a technique that I follow that I've been taught to reparent myself. And it's just a soothing technique, just to talk to that five-year-old boy and go, you know what, I'm here. Yeah, I'm not going anywhere.

Todd Cowles: 53:28

Yeah, and it's oof, that's powerful. It's interesting. We have two voices. We have our internal voice and talk track that speaks to us in our conscious, and then we have this external voice that everyone else hears and interfaces with. And you know, trauma has a way of manipulating that internal voice, and there's really like you can step into social media and how social media is impacting this internal mechanism and voice that our young people are being exposed to, the the standards, and this is I don't want to be too conspiratorial or anything, but I I think what we're witnessing now is a massive misunderstanding of the value of human life, and a lot of it has to do with you know our young generation being exposed to first-person shooter games. You know, Lashkey kids, parents weren't around or single parent homes, you know, they play these games and a lot of blood, a lot of just violence, and then you know, they come out into this world, and it's it's like I'm not pointing fingers at games or anything, but it's just like it's this internal voice that is that has been manipulated to think that there's a really low, there's a really low threshold for other humans. And it's just really sad because you know our world and and who we are to one another could be a lot better if we would just accept our own responsibility in it, in our internal voice and how it's speaking. You know, like road rage, that's that's a good one. It's super easy. I always viewed like driving as a microcosm of like who we are to one another because you're encased in this you know piece of aluminum or steel. No one's gonna talk to you about anything. But if you want to express your anger towards another person, you can cut them off, you can speed up, you can tailgate them, you can be really aggressive. And it's like this isn't who we are. Like this, this is not how we should be towards one another. It's we should hold the door open for one another. We should look at one another in the eyes and say, you know, hello, or good morning, or good after. How's your day going? You this is who we really are at the core. And you know, and for me, it goes back to you know, believing in Jesus, that you know, he wants us to love one another, and from that, those things flow. It's just a general communal respect towards one another.

Todd Carswell: 55:45

Yeah. Yeah. And I've recognized, man, that if if I had not had intervention, some getting some help, it would have been easy for me to just here's what happens. You're hurting, you hate yourself, there's the self-loathing. And then over time, you get so tired of feeling those negative feelings. And that's how people become sociopaths or they get violent. So that could easily have been me. And so that's man, I'm so thankful that people I got the interventions, man. I mean, it wasn't anything majors, it wasn't like a whole group of people sat down with me, but over time I just came to the realization, you know what? And there were people that mentored me over my life, and those were inflection points that and I could see where God was kind of okay, He was stepping in and making those inflection points for me. So I'm thankful for that.

Todd Cowles: 56:35

So Yeah, yeah, and I and I think it's I think every person has that path available to them if they can you know crawl out of some of their stuff. You know, it's if if you're in the pits, it's not it's not gonna happen. You you know, you have to have some self-motivation, you have to create the positive self-talk in your head to do something, to take some sort of action, you know, whether it is to seek out therapy, whether it is to confide in someone, how you've been feeling.

Todd Carswell: 57:05

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm from the mountains of North Carolina, and there's just this cycle of poverty and drugs, violence, crime. And I I don't look at the people stuck in those cycles in my family. I'm not looking at them going, oh poor you, because I can't in every case I'm looking at where they made choices to embrace it. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. And it's like and I I I don't hate them, I'm not mad at them, and I'm not looking down at them because I'm thankful because there were people that came alongside and put their arm around me and just said, you know what? Hey, bud. And they're just just a few words. And that was an inflection point. But I did have to make a choice to accept what they said, you know what I mean? Right. There's an acceptance of it. And yeah, and I and I can see uh in in many of the cases where they had those choices and they chose to perpetuate it, man.

Todd Cowles: 58:00

So yeah, it's easy, and and that's an easy path. Uh right. It's just uh accepting uh accepting your lot in life, so to speak, that accepting this is the way things are, that's um. And then you get bitter.

Todd Carswell: 58:13

And that's when a lot of them turn to crime because they once you're embittered and you feel entitled, oh I've been this has been taken from me. Right. It's easy then to commit crimes to get what you want. So and you can that could have been me, man. Yeah, I can justify all kinds of bad behavior. So yeah.

Todd Cowles: 58:30

Yeah, and I I I I think it's why I'm so grateful for the position I'm I'm in now, is that you know nothing was nothing was handed to me. And there were there was a time where I felt I was owed. There was a time where I felt um entitled, so to speak, like I'm owed this. But I I don't anymore. I anything that I have or obtain it's just by the grace of God, so to speak, I should say, so to speak, by the grace of God. And but also very humbled uh in all that, that I it could just be gone. You know, it's all this could be done and humbled for you know every day that I'm given.

Todd Carswell: 59:09

Dude, that's so true, man. Thanks for sharing that, man. So let's uh let's talk about the tech industry and AI. So what was your path into the tech industry? It started in the Air Force, right?

Todd Cowles: 59:20

Yeah, yeah. So back then, so this is um pre I want to say wind, I'm gonna say pre-XP.

Todd Carswell: 59:28

Windows XP, yeah.

Todd Cowles: 59:29

Yeah, so it would have been like um NT, Windows NT, so that uh precipitated XP. And there weren't there really weren't a dedicated support help desk. There really wasn't that infrastructure in play. And um the career field that I was in, they ended up oftentimes having to deal with that because there's no one else to call. And it really exposed me. I was like, oh, like I fixed a couple things, like I I had done, you know, I I just kind of uh I think I had like a like a Windows DOS book that I was reading, and there's just some issues, and I was like, oh, let me oh, you know, and it just I was like, oh, this is kind of cool. And you know, I took a it took a long time, but um I got my XP certifications. That's actually what got me my job in Iraq. So I got um my Cisco certification, my CCNA, and then my XP certification, and that got me into Iraq working at the help desk. And while I was working at the help desk, I was studying for my VMware certification and my exchange, Microsoft Exchange certification. This is all the email stuff was virtualized over there. A lot of stuff was virtualized. And all of a sudden I had these certs, and no one else had these certs. So they promoted me into uh you know managing the virtualized exchange, which then gave me access, you know, to support some other teams and do some cool stuff with virtualization. And that led on to my job at Nora Northcom. And from Nora and Northcom, you know, I went to EMC and was doing VMware. So really it started at the help desk, um, learning the help desk, you know, dealing with file servers. I remember this this general, like his file servers fell off his desktop somehow, and he came out and he was like, Who here can help me get my file servers back? You know, and these other these other help desk folks were like, I gotta get up on it, you know, they're like, I gotta get up out of here. And I was like, I can help you, sir. I didn't know what I was doing, I didn't know what the problem was, but I looked at it and I was like, man, I think I said, sir, I think they have to be re-added, but I don't have the admin privileges to do that. Let me go get someone that can that can do that. And I went and found a sergeant that I that was back there, and I said, Hey, the general needs these file servers added back to his desktop. I don't have the privileges to do that. Can you take a look at it? He's like, Yeah. He goes back and he fixes it. He's like, Thanks, man. I was like, thank you. Well, you know, that kind of that opened up the door. Like, you know, I've been talking about like you have to recognize opportunity when it's in front of you and don't be scared of it, even if you don't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I was like, oof, this one, I don't I don't want to delete anything here. You know, I better go get someone, which is fine. But having that initiative, so that really opened up IT and the world of IT for me, which is really different now than it is today. And AI is an extension of a lot of the stuff I had already been doing, uh, you know, being at IBM and being a data scientist and you know, just working with models. And back then, we're not talking anything extensive. We're um I did have a uh deep learning class at BU. So I had exposure to you know forward and back propagation networks and had an understanding of AI and machine learning, and then was using it in my job at IBM, and it just sort of grew, like all of a sudden it was here, but we were always kind of in the periphery of it, so to speak. And now it's you know proliferated across everything. I think the one thing that I've really recognized is that a lot of these organizations that I'm working with, they're not as far as far along with it as one would anticipate. Like what you see in the market, like AI is taking over everything and it's getting rid of jobs, and it that might be happening. Like I know IBM got rid of like 91% of their HR staff because of H AI. Amazon, I believe, is getting ready to do that. Meta just laid off a bunch of you know, this whole AI team. Maybe it is part of that. You know, I I'm not in those rooms to make those decisions, so I, you know, it's just sort of conjecture if I say it is because of AI. But I what I am seeing, and even in my own role, is AI becomes a force multiplier. Yes. I can build an entire end-to-end ML or data, ML, and AI ops framework with models and ingestion of data and the front-end app to deliver it to like a market space or consumers in less than two or three days with AI. You know, what used to take me a month, I can now do in about two to three days. And I do have projects where I'm working with customers where we'll talk about, hey, we wanted to do this, we want to do this, like, okay, next day, here you are. They're like, what? And I tell them, like, you really need to be using AI in what you're doing. And I've always had this thought that if you're not working towards consulting yourself out of a job, you're doing a disservice to your customer. You know, they shouldn't need me.

Todd Carswell: 1:04:49

Exact same thing. Yes.

Todd Cowles: 1:04:51

They shouldn't need me in a couple years. Like, I should evolve and I should evolve into something more, something different. Right. And they should be able to do this. My dad would say to me, uh, be fully prepared to reinvent yourself every three to five years. And I think it's very true. You know, what I was doing at Databricks just a year ago is stark contrast to what I'm doing now in in relationship to how I'm consulting the customers and and how we're working together. And it's just been, it's good, I can't remember all these switches and options. And it's just like having AI, like I do think you have to understand coding. You do have to have a background in it. So people that are like, you don't need to go to school for it anymore. Like, yes, you do. Yes, you do, because you need to be able to read what it's doing and go, hey, that's not what I'm talking about there. This there should be a couple options that need to be called that do this, and then go, oh yeah, great idea. That's you know, it always responds back, you know, oh yeah, that's a great idea. And he's like, Yeah, it's a great idea. I gave you that idea. Like you kind of poke at the AI a little bit. So So I think uh and again, I I was never a high-speed programmer. I I was always able to do enough to get by. And like at BU, we didn't um there may have been one class in Python, but the rest was in R, which is a st primarily statistics focused uh programming language. The rest of the world, the real world, they're using Python, you know, or Java or something, but they're not using R. It's kind of an inside joke for a lot of us now. It's like when I see R, I'm like, oh, an old R user, it's so good to see you. And they're like, oh ha ha ha ha ha. That's funny. But it's it really becomes this force multiplier for yourself in how you're understanding your work in the code. And and not and I think for like working at Databricks, that is, I mean, we've been like even our like monikers and um like our hype video from five years ago, we talk about data and AI before the entire AI hype curve started, all this stuff. But even like with a company at Databricks, I think uh what's so great is that I have the room to do it. This there's not this expectation that now because I'm using AI, you know, I should become everything and everything to anyone all the time. It's like it's uh it's almost ingrained in a cultural perspective that you need the room and space to work with it, to let it breathe, to to cycle, to fail, to, you know, and it's um I've said like I I should put my experience at Databricks in context that I was hired at Databricks and my manager, so my daughter hadn't been born yet, and she was gonna be born uh like within a couple weeks. And I said, I said, Well, I'm getting ready to go on on paternity leave here at IBM. He goes, No, no, no. We'll hire you at Databricks and we'll put you on paternity leave. I said, Time out.

Todd Carswell: 1:07:57

Whoa.

Todd Cowles: 1:07:58

I'm gonna quit IBM. You're gonna hire me the the next day and put me on paternity leave. He goes, Yeah. And that's what happened. I started my career at Databricks on paternity leave, being able to spend you know day in, day out with my newborn daughter, which I I didn't get that type of experience with my son because I was in the thick of my masters. It was really, you know, I was channel like you know, doing a family, doing your masters, working full-time at IBM. It just there was a lot. But it Databricks really afforded me this opportunity to do that. And so now fast forward six plus years, and you know, my experience in corporate America and my relationship with Databricks is all positive. Yeah, there's days that I'm like, man, this is some garbage, some hot garbage right here. But I know that when my career here is done, I will look back on it, and and you you I know you've been around these people because you know a lot of them are coming from companies we were supporting at IBM. They bemoaned, they hated their company, couldn't wait to retire. Even now, when they're retired, they just bash these companies, and I don't have that experience. That's not going to be my experience. It's it's become a very positive experience. And um I I don't have anything negative really to say about it. And I'm sure there's negative things that happen, but it's also like I was saying, just giving me this great opportunity to learn, to learn in this space, sort of on-the-job training. A lot of times we don't know. Even the rocket scientists that work here, they're like, hmm, I don't know. And you'll watch what they do, and then it all of a sudden it'll work. You're like, of course, of course, it's the rocket scientists that figured it out.

Todd Carswell: 1:09:46

Nice. I call them rocket surgeons.

Todd Cowles: 1:09:49

So yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm now at the company that's you know, the tip of the spear of doing these things, and I I'm fortunate enough to have customers that want to do those things because a lot of them get stuck in the minutia of still dealing with their data. That's the other thing about AI. You can AI all you want, but if your data is garbage and it's not, you don't have a process to deal with it, to to um normalize it in certain ways, it's you're gonna get left behind in garbage out. So, yeah, it's still true.

Todd Carswell: 1:10:21

It is still true. Still true. So, I mean, yeah, AI is a tool. And so, I don't know, from what I've seen, this is an age-old thing that I've seen in the tech industry. It's like people don't want to share their knowledge, uh generally speaking, because they're afraid that they're gonna become obsolete or they'll be replaced. Yeah, and you see that everywhere in the tech industry. It's like, hey, uh, you're doing this manual process over and over again. Why don't you just uh do this and be done with it? And they're like, Well, they won't need me. I mean, I've literally heard people say that, and it's just like, dude, go do more fun stuff, get rid of that. Stop doing the manual stuff and you know, just knock this out, put a process in place, and then move on to more fun things, you know. Right. So that's my I think it helps do that.

Todd Cowles: 1:11:08

It's um yeah, yeah, like crafting synthetic data sets to test things. It's you know, that used to take me a couple days, now it's you know, a minute, you know, and a thousand rows of data will be created. It's just just efficiency across the board on everything you do. And I think the learning, yeah, and I think the learning, and that's the other aspect of it is that if you don't understand something that it did or wrote or it spat out, you can ask. Yeah, I see you're doing this here. Can you help me understand you know why the brackets are right there like that? And you know, the definition, why it's calling it this way, and it'll tell you. And so it's really becomes this interactive, it's it's this interactive process that you get to learn. Like you like on-the-job training really is on the job training. And if you can get excited about those things, if you can, you know, like I, you know, as I've already shared, I just love learning. So it's right up my alley. It's like, oh, I didn't know that's why it did that. Right. But it also like I don't have to remember. Like my favorite one is um like we write our our data into like a spark data frame or a uh a PySpark data frame. And I just like type in, hey, here's the location of my data. Please write it out into a to a spark data frame into the console, you know, and it'd be like, I'll just hit it because I can never remember. It's like, oh yeah, you write the option there for, you know, or write it to a delta table and oh yeah, I forget. It's like I that's the stuff I'm happy to for to forget because it's like this is the stuff it should do. When I say, you know, write this to a delta table, here's where I want it written. It should just write the code and write it for me. And so I I just really like it's great. You know, and it's funny sometimes because I'll I'll see like I do get stupid. I'm getting dumbed down a little bit in some areas too, because it it'll like throw a schema mismatch. And I'm like, oh, I've got the merge schema option. It's like like you forget these things too, and it's like, hey, fix this error, and it's like, you know, so I think things like that, um, even like the troubleshooting with your code is it's just been great. It's just nice.

Todd Carswell: 1:13:16

Yeah. That's tight, man. Yeah. So so what are some of the skills or tactics maybe you've leveraged here in the professional corporate world that others could benefit from?

Todd Cowles: 1:13:27

I think learning how to speak publicly and in having a certain degree of confidence. And when one of one of the greatest classes that I've ever taken, uh it was uh Speak America, uh, taught by a gentleman by the name of Bart Queen and I'd be specialist. Same class, dude. Yes. I brought it to I brought it to Ironbow. Thanks, Ironbow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff, dude. They uh EMC brought him in, and one of the tactics he taught us was to um, aside from you know, crafting your presentation, you should never have more than three bullets on any slide. Everyone, but never more than three bullets, should never speak more than two minutes on any given slide. And really remember that you're presenting for everyone on the other side of you. You're not presenting for yourself. You you're there, you know, as their honorary presenter, and you should treat it as such, their time is valuable. Yeah. But one of the ways that you can get through some of the jitters is aside from rehearsing, like I always memorize my presentations. And I think you saw it one time at Ironbow when the presentation went uh belly up. It's like I didn't even I didn't even skip a beat. I was like, oh, it doesn't matter. And I just kind of started talking too and finished out the presentation. It's happened in front of generals before, all this stuff. So I think memorizing your talk track is never a bad thing. But you can take a piece of paper and draw eyes on it and put them throughout the wall that you're gonna be facing when you're rehearsing your presentation, and you make eye contact with those pieces of paper because you know Bart uh talked about this, like I think he called it the machine gun spray when you're presenting these words.

Todd Carswell: 1:15:06

Yep.

Todd Cowles: 1:15:06

Yes, yes, like in that really is helpful and it's impactful. Like you make eye contact with someone in a crowd when you're speaking, and you're now speaking to them. And obviously, you don't want to do a death gaze into their soul, right? But you know, it and it just really helps prepare you to become confident when you're speaking and presenting. And and I think professionally it's a somewhat of a lost skill, lost art. It's um some people are really good at it. Some people are like, oh gosh, I gotta listen to this for they just you know, their slides are voluminous, there's a bunch of stuff on it, and you're just like, oh gosh. It's I think dude, yes, yeah. I think learning how to to speak publicly and being okay with those jitters, because I still get jitters when I present.

Todd Carswell: 1:15:54

Oh yeah.

Todd Cowles: 1:15:56

I think being grateful, yeah, yeah. I think just being grateful every day that you wake up that you're just given this opportunity to work with customers. I'm in this career field career field where I get to work with customers. So I get the opportunity to work with them, and there's this other company and entity that's paying me to do this. And it just really is a it's just a positive, I think having a positive attitude towards your work. I I used to have a friend that would um he would bash his corp his corporation, and and I was on the opposite side of that. I I really didn't bash the company I work for. I was humbled and grateful for the job and opportunity. But he said, I'll never, I'll never give give my life to a company. And that stuck with me because there's a huge portion of your life that is work, and your work does become your life. Whether you want it, it's you know, if one wants to accept that or not, you know, there's gonna be a huge section of your life that is gonna revolve around work. So you should make it count, you should make it matter. Why would you want to spend eight, 10 hours a day, you know, serving a corporation and not like it? Like, and I get it, like there's some evilness in corporations. I'm not focused on those things. Um it's like you can't control that. You can control you, you can control how you think and your outlook and what you're gonna do for that day to serve that company. And and again, it's not like a slave master relationship, it's that there's a transfer of monies that you're receiving to do this. That's you know, and what are you going to do to earn that today? And you have to do that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Like I'll end up putting in hours this weekend. I had a bunch of stuff go on this week, and I um headed so I consult the sheets as well. And we're a great customer, love talking to them, love learning about what they're doing and and how we're how we're able to help them. But I'm presenting to them on Tuesday in I think I'm maybe an eighth through my presentation. I got to build a couple demos. It just, you know, that's the nature of the beast sometimes. Yeah, that's not every week, it's not even every month that I have to do that. So I think even then it's like I have to do that this weekend. But I'm not angry. There's no vinegar flowing around it because it's like, oh, okay. You know, yes, you're right, you get to, but you know, four, maybe five times a year, this ends up happening. It's not that big a deal because guess what? In two weeks, I can put in for a week off and I can go steelhead fishing for an entire week. Right? It's like, yeah, it's like it's it's okay. So I I think in the professional sense, just having a little bit degree of you know, after change on how you're viewing your work, and it's it's not the evil empire that you make it out to be. There certainly can be, like, you know, people folks at AWS this week may not feel that way, or Meta may not feel that that way. They just had a huge outage this week. It's impacted every right. And there was, you know, response individuals that probably stayed up for five days straight, troubleshooting that. It's always DNS. Like that's it's always DNS. DNS. Yeah. Yeah. But it's your work is what you make of it. And and I think you said it earlier. If you don't like it, then it's up to you to make a change. It's up to you to invest your in yourself, to learn a skill set, to do something differently, and then go out into the marketplace and see if you can catch a fish that's going to bring you on doing it. And it and I think that's the beautiful thing about America and and capitalism and you know these things is that you can do that. Like you can invest in yourself and then capitalize on that investment in yourself and translate it into more money. Like you it's just yes, yeah. You I mean it's an agency.

Todd Carswell: 1:19:50

You have agency, you have ability to make a diff. You you have the ability to act and to create change in your own life. Yeah. Go ahead. What were you saying?

Todd Cowles: 1:20:01

Well, I was gonna say, you know, back to our days in Iron Bow. Like before I was there, they weren't focused on Splunk. They didn't want, like, no one wanted to sell Splunk. And I lobbied for six, seven months to bring on Splunk as a partner. And and then once you know, they were like, oh, wait, this does analytics, like, yes, this is what we've been telling you. This literally, you know, and then they started to learn about it. They took it upon themselves to learn about the product, and then like, oh, I can sell this and make money. It's like, yes, and it drives hardware. It's like the customer's gonna need, you know, compute and they're gonna need storage and the you know, all those things. And they're like, Oh, well, I don't know why we weren't doing this all along. It's like, of course, of course. So, but I think it's you know, seeing opportunity, you know. Uh I had another friend that would say, um, see a problem, fix a problem. He said that a lot. See a problem, fix a problem. And it just speaks to utility where you can operate and and where you can add value to, you know, whether it's small business, it doesn't always have to be a corporation. Truth.

Todd Carswell: 1:21:03

So good stuff, man. So is there any any takeaways you'd like to leave with the audience here?

Todd Cowles: 1:21:08

I think well, Todd, I I appreciate the opportunity just to share. I I don't know your full viewership or or folks are going to view this, but I I just I really appreciate the opportunity to share. I I think you know I'm going through a season in life where now I've kind of I have a little bit of wisdom, like I've seen a lot of stuff, and um the the opportunity to share, the opportunity just to have a conversation around this stuff, uh it's just been it's been a great opportunity. I really appreciate it. I'm really glad you're doing this. I I I I think it's a cool platform. I think what you're doing is great. Thanks.

Todd Carswell: 1:21:42

Yeah, it's I mean, that's you're speaking to uh people in midlife and we're just sharing what we're going through and helping one another out. So it's dude, I'm enjoying the conversations. It's it's just good, man. Just to meet with people like you and just yeah, man. It's it's meaningful for me. Just to it's it we're it's taking a step back and looking at life and going, ah, and then we get resonance from one another, and it's like, yeah, that's right, man. Yeah. So that's uh that's that's pay dirt for me, man. Just the conversations at a minimum. And then you know I enjoy I enjoy the tech aspects of it. But yeah, yeah, dude. Thanks for coming on, man.

Todd Cowles: 1:22:19

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me. Having me. But yeah, so where can people find you? Where should they connect with you? I think just my LinkedIn. I don't okay. I don't have a big presence, online presence.

Todd Carswell: 1:22:31

Uh I am on LinkedIn, but um, yeah, I have a link in the description to uh Todd Cole's LinkedIn profile. It's uh Todd C O W L E S, but we'll put a link there. Okay.

Todd Cowles: 1:22:44

Yeah, there is another Todd Coles out west, so I'm not that one. Yeah, he he sells he sells like you, so yeah, he sells like uh he sells like electronic button equipment or something like that, like control systems or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, it's been great. I really appreciate it, Todd.

Todd Carswell: 1:23:03

Yeah, man, it's been good. So my my takeaway here, I keep going back to this quote, man, from Robert Lewis, Lewis Stevenson. He said, Life's not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well. And brother, you're you're one of those dudes that did that, man. You didn't have uh, you know, the best start in life, but uh you made the best of what you what you were given, man. And mentors, dude. That's I'm just so thankful for the people when I was growing up grade school, middle school, high school, uh adults that didn't have to. And I was not a I was not a kid that people wanted to be around because I was a bit of a jerk. And dude, these mentors, people that saw me and was like, this kid needs some help. And they just can't they just came alongside, man. And those were inflection points. And I look I can look back now and see that. And so the message I would say to younger people if you're facing that bitterness and if you just feel like, man, life is against me, uh that's not the case. And you need to find a way to see the good. And that may be seeking out a mentor, an older person that's been there, done that, somebody that you want to be like and just get with them and just talk to them. Don't ask them, will you mentor me? Because that's gonna that'll make people feel weird. But right, right. If someone asked me that, I'd be like, uh I don't want to mess this up. Yeah, just seek people out, man. Just have those conversations. And because the relationships, man, that's that really helps us. And that those are inflection points. It's all about the relationship.

Todd Cowles: 1:24:37

So yeah, I agree. Good stuff.

Todd Carswell: 1:24:38

I agree.

Todd Cowles: 1:24:39

Uh thanks.

Todd Carswell: 1:24:40

Good talk to the enjoyed the episode. Please uh consider leaving a review and share it with your friends. And until next time, see you on the path.