The Road Back to Yourself: What 40,000 Miles Can Teach You About Living Fully

0:00 The topics and opinions express in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicitor implies shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their highest potential. Business can be such a force for good in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we all want working on Purpose. Now, here's your host, Doctor Elise Cortes.

1:04 Welcome back to the Working a Purpose program pased training in this week. Great to have you. I'm your host, Doctor Elise Cortes. If you haven't heard this show before, we've been on here since February of two, tenty fifteen. I am someone who loves the passionate people and organizations, and most leaders don't really understand how much energy, human energy they're sitting on. I help them unlock it. I'm an organizational psychologist, bloggal therapists, workforce advisor, and the founder of the Gusto Now movement. But the title that I really live by that much is much simpler as I simply traffic and energy now the surface motivation of another engagement initiative, but the deeper force what I call Gusto, the life force for performance that drives commitment, perseverance, and genuine ownership of a shared mission in the clients who serve You. Can learn more about so whom we can work together at gustodashnow dot com or visit my personal site Alice Coortes dot com for more information on my books and how we can help you. Getting In today's program, we have with us Michael Yang. He's a career an American entrepreneur, investor, and adventurer whose journey bridges two continents and tell us of a lifelong pursuit of meaning. Born in Seoul, South Korea, he immigrated to the United States at the age of fourteen and went on to build, create, and lead companies during the birth of Silicon Valley's Internet revolution.

2:17 He's the author of Coming Alive on the Ride, a memoir of motorcycle travel, self discovery, and Korean heritage. We'll be talking about it today from the Danish point of his Korean heritage itself and the learnings that came with that. We're going to hear about some of the points from his forty thousand miles in motorcycle travel, and finally some of the his entrepreneurial ventures and pursuits and how they came to be. He joins us today from Los Angeles, CAV I am here at different place. I'm here broadcasting live from the University of Texas at Dallas, the Devian Jendal School of Business. Michael, Welcome to Working on Purpose. Thank you, thank you for having me so so welcome. I want to celebrate this beautiful thing you brought into world with Michael. I know you have four children, and I like to tell my guests because most all of them are authors that writing a book is harder than bringing a child into the world. I know because I've done both. So I just want to say congratulations.

3:12 Thank you, thank you so much. So let's start. Oh, absolutely, you know, it's always amazing to me. I don't know about you, Michael, but I want to go into like, you know, Barnes and Noble or any kind of a bookstore. I'm always amazed, Like, I know what it takes to bring a book into the world, and look at all of these hundreds of thousands of books in here. It's crazy to me. Right right, But we're driven by the story that we want to share with the world. So it's been a labor of love for me. For sure. Well let's start a little bit here. Just you know, I love how you open your book and you say, to my fellow adventuress and adventurers at heart, my hope is that in reading this book, you'll be inspired to embrace the adventure that is your life, finding the most soulful elements by the university along the way, and ultimately be rewarded with the gift of adventure, the daily joy of mystery, beauty and truth. Let's start with that, shall we might go. Let's start on that note.

4:10 Sure, yeah, so you know, life is hard and there are a lot of struggles that I think everybody goes through whether you're successful or not. But in my experience, you know, I try to do my best in everything that I take on. And later in my life in my sixties, I went on a cross continental motorcycle trips across America and Canada and Mexico and realize that, you know, taking on adventures in life, despite the fear and the anxiety that comes with you know, going into something that's unknown and uncertain, has provided a tremendous amount of growth and and realization about myself and added meaning to my life.

5:04 So that's what I want to encourage audience to do, to embrace the adventure. Hmm. I want I want to echo that there, Michael. One of my coaches and mentors is Sean Anderson, who I met on air many many years ago, and he has a practice when he travels, he likes to go into a country that he traveled, he plans to walk across, so no two wheels, two wheels, but walk across over a certain period of time. And he generally what he does his approach to that is he doesn't plan hotels in advance or hostels or anything like that. He finds lodging and food along the path. And he's a vegan, so it's no small feat to be able to do this, and he does it to stay sharp right, to keep those life skills of origing of sorts, if you will, really strong. It's amazing.

5:57 Yes, I mean, in my experience, going into a foreign country is a great idea because you're kind of in a unknown environment, and when you get to talk to the local people, you sort of see how they think and how they live, and I think that is a sort of fine enlarging experience. So I think travel to foreign countries is a great thing, and I encourage everybody to do that if they haven't already. It's one of those things. Someone said that it's one of the best ways to remove judgment, bias, and ignorance, and I completely agree with that.

6:43 Yes, yes, absolutely, And. To that end, Michael, I want to celebrate that you came to the United States when you were fourteen years old, and your father blazed the trail. He came first, and it was because of his courage and tenacity that he was able to get the whole family here and look what you've done. We're going to talk in the third segment about your business pursuits, but I want to say to you, you are what makes America great. Oh, people like you that come You're welcome, who come to this country, who don't speak the language, who find a way, they persevere, they see the opportunity, and they sail past those of us who were born here. I want to just celebrate that.

7:24 Oh, thank you so much. I was very blessed to be able to come to America. I had a just wonderful image of America and believe that it's a country that provided an opportunity, and I did my best to try to get the best education I can, work as hard as I can and pursue my dream, and I was rewarded with some success. And I'm taking that success to something more meaningful by encouraging people to find bitter path for themselves through my book Coming Alive on the Ride. Something that I learned from your book that I wanted back to because this segment I wanted to focus as much as we can on your early heritage and your education.

8:12 You talk about what was like to grow up in South and South Korea. After the war when North and South were divided with very different ways of being governed and such. Can you speak a little bit about how the war changed, how your country was divided and how it was led. Right, So, the Korean War was very devastating war, even more devastating than the US Civil War because it was same country, same people who lived in the same land for hundreds and thousands of years, but because of the ideological difference between sort of communism or socialism in the North supported by Soviet Union, and then sort of democratic capitalist society supported by the United States in the South Korea.

9:03 And that was really the beginning of the division of two Koreas, which is tragic and very sad. But you know, I think that the history has proven that the communism doesn't work. There's no incentive for people to work hard and try to create additional value to the society. So the capitalism is has proven superior. But capitalism requires that you look after those who have fallen behind through some social safety nets and others. So, you know, I think Korea is looking for that new way where everybody can you know, lead a decent life regardless of you know, where your stations are in the society, and so yeah, it's a kind of very interesting comparing the Korean experience and the American experience as it relates to sort of ideological differences between the two countries history.

10:16 What would you say, I don't know, you could You've written a whole book here about your experiences, but just a few things that you would say that what did you what did you get from growing up in Korean? What what did it teach you that has been useful that you brought forth into your life. So, you know, I think the biggest thing that I would say I learned is, you know, the importance of harmony, whether it's in family or in a country. We were pretty poor, uh in the sixties in Korea because the war devastated the country and the country Korea has not much natural resources other than some farming, and so uh, you know, I think it taught me to be resilient growing up in that in that society that had very scarce resources. But even more than that, I think the importance of living in harmony of another one another is very important, especially after the devastating war that divided the country.

11:22 But yeah, coming to America was a complete eye opening experience. Because of the abundant resources as well as abundant opportunities that America provided something that we didn't we didn't have in Korea, and that was the reason why my father decided to come to America and bring the family along, to give us better opportunity in education and in my in our career. And I really applaud that change. I lived in Spain and brazila in my mid twenties, and it made all the difference in the world to live in those countries and learn from them, and learn from their cultures and be expanded by them through those cultures. So you became a US citizen, I want to also celebrate that. How old were you when you became a citizen.

12:06 I was nineteen years old when I became a US citizen nineteen or twenty. I was a third or fourth year student at UC Berkeley, where I was going to college. And you could get applied for citizenship five years after you have a perment, residence status or the Green Card. So we decided to my father said we're going to live here, our children will live here and become Americans. So we got to become a naturalized US citizen. So we took that we applied for citizenship, got past the test, and we received a naturalized citizen certificate around nineteen eighty two, when I was like twenty years old.

12:47 So two follow on questions to that, what did it feel like to get that citizenship? It was, you know, I was I was excited to become an American and and I maintained my Korean heritage and the roots. But as my father told us, this is our new country, and so we're gonna live here, We're gonna have our children here, and and basically we need to put our roots down and and and become a productive and useful American citizen. And so I was very excited to to you know, become a US citizen.

13:35 But I realized that I'm I'm you know, I'm from Korea. And so, as I wrote about in my book Coming Alive on the Ride, even my soccer teammates in high school, uh, sort of teased me because of you know, the way I look and and where I came from. So I realized that I am different even though I'm an American and I'm a Korean American. And I realized later in my life that that that difference is actually can be a strength because I am I have a sort of unique perspective being a Korean American who was also American and Korean.

14:20 No doubt about it, it gives you a strength, no doubt about You have a whole different perspective and lens on the world, and you understand the value of the resources, the opportunity in a way that others who grew up with it just take for granted, I think, right. The other thing I wanted to celebrate to is if it's okay with you, do you talk about a book. I'd like to honor your given name. You you took the name of Michael, because your given names church with him as well. Can we celebrate your given name? Absolutely? So? You know, my my Korean name min Jung means like a righteous person or a righteous uh, you know, citizen. And when I I wanted to become a US citizen, I wanted to adopt a Western name. And since my Korean name Min started with M and I, I look for an American name that started with the same M and an I, and Michael seemed like a friendly name that was also a biblical name. And since I became a Christian after coming to America, I thought that archangel named Michael is it matches my Korean name spelling as well as has a good meaning as a leader in the heavenly realm. And so that's the name that I adopted, and I'm very happy with.

15:42 It, wonderful. Just briefly here, wanted to celebrate too. You've written and it's also called It's in part in memoir, and I appreciate that you share that you had a marriage for ten years and then you moved on and you found Sonny. I know you have four for children. I just want to. Celebrate that you you know, you got it all, and I really appreciate how you let us in and even also how you negotiate being able to take your motorcycle rides. You know, She's like, you can do those rides, but you've got to do more around the house or you're going to do those rides. So we'll talk more about the rights after the break, but I want to give you a chance just to respond to how is it to be able to know that you've been able to build companies and come to the to America and have this beautiful family as well.

16:29 Yeah, So, I mean, I am so thankful for all of the lucky breaks and blessings that I've been able to enjoy in America and to be able to raise a beautiful family. And you know, I think that that that feeling of gratitude for what I have is very important to me. And I teach our children to be always positive and be thankful to be able to live in America, because there's no country like America that provides so much opportunity nowhere else in the world. And so you need to be grateful and be positive and be useful and contribute back to the society, you know. And that's that's been a consistent teaching that I received from my father and something that I'm teaching to my children.

17:25 That's beautiful. Michael, let's set our listeners and viewers think about it a little bit. To be your heritage and what brought you here to the United States where we take our first break. Your host, doctor Releas Cortes, were there with Michael Yang, a Korean American entrepreneur, investor, and adventurer whose journey bridges to continents and tell us of a lifeline pursuit of meaning and his experience building, creating, and leading companies. During the birth of Silicon Valley's Internet Revolution. We've been talking a bit about his heritage and what it has taught him, what it's meant to him. After the break, we're going to snuggle up with him and learn and hear about some of these adventures from his motorcycle travels. We'll be right back.

18:15 Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Alise A. L Se at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

19:06 Thanks for staying with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes, as I am dedicated to creating a world where organizations thrive because their people thrive, are led by inspirational leaders that help them find to contribute their greatness, and we do business that betters the world. I keep researching and writing my own books. So one of my latest came out is called The Great Revitalization, How activating meaning and purpose can radically enliven your business. And I wrote a tough leaders Understand today's discerning workforce? What do they want to need from you to give their best and want to stay? And then I provide you twenty two best practices to equip you to provide it through your leadership and your culture. You can find my books on Amazon or my personal site at least cooretest dot com if you are just now joining us. My guest is Michael Yang. He's the author of Coming Alive on the Ride, a memoir of motorcycle travel, self discovery and Korean heritage. So forty thousand miles is quite a bit to cover onto two wheels, Michael, I don't know where you might want to start, but here's that quote that I mentioned earlier, this idea from Mark Twain. It says travel is fatal to presudice bigotry.

20:10 And narrow mindedness, and many of our people need it thoroughly. On these accounts, broad wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner on the earth all once lifetime. Here here, here's to travel. Yes, absolutely, that quote really resonated with me when I first read that, and so I decided to include that in my book. And it's largely from my own personal experience of traveling to some twenty different countries that I visited over my life. And you know, I think traveling is a gift, and I invite anybody to accept that gift, to be able to travel anywhere outside of their town, outside of their state, outside of their country, because it really and broadens you perspective, and I think makes makes you a better person and makes the world a better place.

21:07 Completely one hundred percent agree. So I'm gonna admit very very openly to you and anybody else listening to this program. Michael, I was so jealous when I read in your book that you set out on a trip on May twenty third, twenty twenty. I'm like, why did I think of that? What a great idea. I was going nuts during the pandemic, and so you set off on a trip during the pandemic. Let's hear a little bit about that. Yeah, so this was in May twenty twenty. The pandemic had just started a couple of months before, and everything was being locked down, and so you uh, it was a shelter in place that downtown LA was completely shut down.

21:50 So it was kind of eerie, and you know, it was it was kind of uncomfortable staying home every day and not be help us to go out, especially outdoor loving guy like me. And I had another best friend named Carl who lived up in Seattle, and so he and I had been going on motorcycle trips since nineteen ninety I'm sorry, twenty eighteen, and so he and I talked on the phone, and I mean, there was nothing restricting us going from going on a motorcycle trip. So we decided to go on a motorcycle travels through ten western states of the United States, and so we took that trip. We met up in Crescent City, California, which is a midpoint between LA where I live and Seattle, where Carl lives. So we met there and then we started going up to Washington to Idaho to Wyoming, Montana and circle the western part of America. And that was a great trip.

23:01 And so talk to us about what traba means to you. I think if I got it, there was definitely a meditative element to it for you. I think you connect with nature through your travel, and there's something about, you know, planning the trip and stopping into the different cafes and places that you get food from that really seem to stimulate you. Yeah. So I loved motorcycle traveling because I just like to ride motorcycle. But you know, it's different than driving a car or in an airplane because you're exposed to the element. You're not caged in by this metal or glass.

23:43 So you are in the nature and you fill the air, you smell the air, you fill the rain and the heat, and so you need to be prepared. And when I'm on a motorcycle trip, I might be right, I reading three hundred to four hundred miles a day because these are long distance trips and I have when I have a lot of time, sometimes I listen to music through the bloodbooth has set in my helmet, or other times I was just kind of think about my life and kind of I look back and ask questions like how did I become so lucky to be able to enjoy this motorcycle travel across America? And answer to those questions that will take me back to the Silicon Valley where I was a founder of a tech startup that gotrect part for seven hundred million dollars during the first Internet boom in two thousand and then going back to you know, being an early maybe a young immigrant to this country as a fourteen year old, out of place teenager, and then growing up in Korea in the in the sixties and early seventies. So I realized that there is a story arc and that I that I had, so I wanted to tell my story, and that's why I wrote the book Coming Alive on the Ride, just based on that excitement that I was feeling while I was riding on a motorcycle.

25:13 I really appreciate how you brought that to life for us. I don't write motorcycles. I have been on some, but I'm never really that's never been my thing to ride them. So I want to talk a little bit about the trip that you took from Los Angeles to Newfoundland. That was that was intense. It was. It was the longest trip that I have taken. It took me forty days to go from LA on the Pacific Ocean to the Saint John, Newfoundland on the Atlantic Ocean. That point there is a Cape Spear that is the easternmost point of North American continent. So from that point it's closer to Paris and London than it is to LA. And then you know, riding back to LA through the East coast, you know, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, down to Pennsylvania, Virginia, down to Mississippi, Louisiana, New Orleans, and then you know through the Texas Houston, Dolla, San Antonio, and then El Paso, and then riding through the Mexican side of the border through the Sonora Desert and back out to Arizona and back to LA. So it was an epic trip. And it was during that trip that I decided to write a book to share my story.

26:35 So in some way it was transformative because when I decided to write a book, it sort of changed the trajectory of my life as from an entrepreneur to more of an explorer or adventurer and to a storyteller. And that sort of gives me a new purpose of my life to inspire people through storytelling. M h amen, percent, I'm in for that. And then let's just talk briefly. Then you did a solo trip to Alaska. That must have been interesting. You didn't have your sidekick, beautiful Karl with you, and let's rest his soul and honor him. I know he's not with us, right right. Yeah, So you know, I was joined by Karl for about two weeks of that forty day trip to Newfoundland, and the following year, I wanted to ride up to Prude Bay, Alaska, but Carl had a lot of work to do in Seattle as a lawyer, and so he unfortunately couldn't go, And so I decided to to make the trip up to Alaska on my motorcycle by myself.

27:43 And it was an epic trip because you know, I think that solo traveled to Alaska was really another life changing, uh trip, because you know, you know, riding up to Prude Bel, Alaska, which is at the northern tip of North America right in the Arctic Ocean, and riding back home through the you know, the Alaska and British Columbia of Canada, and then back down to the West coast of the United States. Yeah, so it was. It gave me a lot of sense of accomplishment that I didn't feel before. I felt like I could take on a new challenge and successfully accomplish the goal of getting back home safely. And so it's you know, I've been on this quest to travel all over the world on my motorcycle and I sort of crossed off North America and I also went down to Patagonia and South America in twenty twenty four. So this summer, I'm heading to Europe and I am planning to ride through the northern Europe, visiting about ten countries up to the nordkap and Norway, which is the northernmost point of Europe. So yeah, it's uh, it's an ongoing uh journey, uh to ride motorcycle all over the world.

29:14 I love it, Michael, And let me share with you. As an organizational psychologist and as a logo therapist one who helps organizations activate meaning in their in their cultures. Part of what we do when we're working with organizations is we encourage people to one talk about their passions like you're talking about your motorcycle travel because just talking about it, you're already tapping into a higher sense of energy, which then becomes infectious to people around around you. And then two, encouraging your team to pursue what they're passionate about, both inside the organization and outside, because you're elevating that whole life force of energy. And so that's what I see in you is and that's how you know you. It spills over into into how you build your companies, how you how you are a husband and a father, and so this is the gusto piece that we're out to help organize or organizations also find and activate.

30:06 So right, yeah, I think it's it's great to find passion in your work, but also find passion outside of your work. Absolutely because there a lot of times very complimentary Exactly once you are pursuing your passion outside, then you make a more productive employee at a company because you've had your feel of you know, satisfaction and and and so anyway, that's kind of what I encourage, you know, I encourage people to be good at what they do at work, but also pursue their per passion and adventure outside. Of work because it will make them better one hundred percent and then that beautiful elevated energy comes back to work just as you were saying, so beautiful. I couldn't let you go without a celebrating that because it's such a core part of what we do to help organizations as well, and you are living, walking, breathing example of that literally. So let's grab our first break, Michael, our second break. Actually, I'm your host, Doctor Releasee Cortez. We've go on the air with Michael Yang. He's a Korean American entrepreneur, investor, and adventurer whose journey bridges to continents and tells of a lifelong pursuit of meaning and his experience building, creating, and leading companies during the birth of Silicon Valley's Internet revolution. We've been talking in this segment about his travels and what they meant to him and how they fueled him and where he's going next. And this last break, when we come back, we're going to hear about some of his entrepreneurial efforts and what they yielded in his life and what we can learn from

31:36 those things. We'll be right back. Doctor Elise Cortez as a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose, an inspirational speaker and author. She helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is Working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Alise A Lisee at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

32:46 Okay, So, Michael, I really want to hear about your entrepreneurial pursuits. They're so inspiring, and I want to start by situating that. As I mentioned at the beginning of the show, I'm sitting here in the campus of the University of Texts, SIT Dallas, and where am I. I'm in a school of innovation. I stepped out of a group that I was helping to be part of to mentor these are all students I want to pursue entrepreneurship and innovation. So of course, when I come back in there after the show, They're going to want to know what I talked to about you with you, okay, So I want to help you got to give me some pearls. So so first let's start here. You you talk about having an internship with your uncle Phillips company at TeleVideo and what a transformative experience that was. So let's just we'll sketch a few of your early experiences that helped form you. But maybe we can start with that one.

33:36 Okay, Yes, So you know I was fit. In hindsight, I was very lucky and very blessed to be able to arrive in America in this town of San Jose, California, that was the hotbed of technologic innovation in the in the whole world. Actually, Apple Computer was a very small, you know, startup, founded by two Sieves in a garage in San Jose in nineteen seventy six, which is the year that I arrived there. And I was very interested and inspired by all the technological innovation that was going on in Silicon Valley. See you jobs, there's an Intel and many other software and computer companies that were founded right within ten twenty mile radius of where I was living.

34:32 And I decided to measure in electrical engineering computer science as my major in college. So because I had I developed an interest in becoming a tech entrepreneur and I wanted to learn more about the technology so that I would have some knowledge of that industry. And in nineteen eighty that was the era where the personal computer had just come out, and there was a major sort of industry transformation taking place because before then it was all mainframe computer, these massive computer that was inside these big buildings.

35:14 They cost millions of dollars. But personal computer was this very small computer that you could sit on a desktop and you pay a few thousand dollars and then you could use, you know, use it to do spreadsheet calculation or work processing or other things that cannot be done before. And so my uncle, who was also electrical engineer, started a computer terminal company called TeleVideo, and because I was measuring an electrical engineer computer science at Berkeley, he lent me work at TeleVideo over the over the summer, over the two summers in eighty and eighty one, I'm sorry eighty one and eighty two while I was student, so working on TeleVideo alongside these brilliant engineers designing these personal computers and computer terminals. Gave me a really front seat to all the technological innovation that was going on. And so, you know, whether it's the set, you know, the semiconductor chips, or the computer display, or hard disk storage or random access memory, all these things I learned while I was interning there, and later on, after I graduated from college and graduate school, I was able to get a job and the knowledge that I gained in my internship at my uncle's company later eventually it gave me the sort of the training and the underpinning to start my own

36:46 tech startup company in the dot com era in nineteen ninety eight. Well, before we get to that as well, a couple of the things I want to celebrate about your story is then here you are, you're a college student, and you realize there is a business opportunity, and so you start your first business while you're in college, and it actually got big enough and demanding enough that you went, oh, oh, if I continue this, I'm probably not going to finish my studies at least on the timeline that I want. So can you share a bit about what was the business? Yeah, so, you know, when I was like a third or fourth year student at Berkeley, I came upon this bruch sure at engineering building a bulletin board. It said a computer terminal for sale for like twelve hundred dollars.

37:40 And I knew that I could purchase that terminal for like around five hundred dollars, and I could sell it at nine dollars and generate a good profit and sell it cheaper than the other company that was selling it for twelve hundred. And so I started a business while I was in college, selling computer terminals to students and professors. And the business went well first few months, and I sold you know, eight or ten terminals and made thousands of dollars. And I got a little scared because if I get the taste of money and profit, I may neglect my studies and never finished college. But you know, my parents would get upset at me, and I personally wanted to finish my degree, and so I decided to stop that business so I could, you know, concentrate on studying to finish my degree and so. But there was a very valuable experience in studying my own company while I was in the school.

38:49 You had a mind for business. You saw an opportunity and you fulfilled it. It's beautiful, Okay. So now fast forward, you're graduating from college here and you're interviewing with big tech companies Xerox, IBM, Nitrel to them, and you end up going to work for Xerox. Yes, my So, after I graduated from Berkeley, I decided to pursue master's degree in computer science and I was lucky to get into Columbia University in New York. And after I finished my master's degree, I interviewed for a different company at different companies, and I got a job offer from Xerox Corporation at their Palo Alto Research Center, which is very close to where my parents were living at the time. So I decided to accept that offer and move back home with my parents and start working there.

39:37 And there was another great experience to learn about all these personal computer innovations like graphical user interface mouse, you know, controlling the cursor on the screen using a mouse device, connecting computers through the internet which later becomes Internet. So it was tremendous learning. But Xerox never really became a successful computer supplier, and so I got I got restless in working in that kind of a research environment. I wanted more action in the in the marketplace, competing and succeeding. So I resigned there and I started my own satellite television business, which didn't quite work out, and so I worked.

40:20 I joined another company and worked in like sales support and marketing, which gave me valuable experience in the in the sales and marketing side of the business, which proved to be very valuable when I was starting my own company later. Yeah, and then you know, yes, you learned a ton as the CEO of Jazz, right, there were so many experiences there that were incredible life lessons. Yeah. So Jazz was this uh PC graphics card manufacturer. We made PC graphics card for PC that allowed customers to do three D graphics on the computer, three D gaming on computers.

41:08 And I. Had a chance to run this company, small startup, so I jumped at the chance and ran it for three years. Ultimately, the business did not fan out, and I was very stressed out because it didn't succeed, and I was out on the street looking for a job. And that was the time when Internet was really booming and taking off, and I thought the browser was really going to change the world, and I came upon an idea to start an online price comparison shopping site that became my Assignment dot com. And we started the company with twenty five thousand dollars of money that I had saved, and within two years we raised thirty million dollars in venture capital.

41:55 And in two thousand, we're getting ready to do an IPO on the NASA stock market when c Net approached US for an acquisition and they acquired US for seven hundred million dollars in stock swap deal. And so that was just a great exit, great timing. Now see net stock that we got as part of the consideration for the acquisition. Uh, you know, it dropped in price significantly when the dot com bubble burst, but still it was an unbelievable opportunity to start a company and and you know, really become financially independent after we sell the company.

42:38 For just a couple of years. You were just it was just it was a two year refort. In I was exactly, it was. It was amazing. It's kind of like how AI is today. AI is booming right now, and there's so much like venture capital investment that's going in and hundreds of billions of dollars are invested in venture capital and then building out these data centers all of the country. So it was like that back then when the internet was a new thing, and I was lucky to be at the right place at the right time, with the right idea, and we worked super hard to grow the business. We got up to millions of users per month, which was an important metrics, and then that's when CNAT came to acquire us.

43:23 And on top of that, one of the other things that really applaud Michael, which is one of the great things about starting a business, bringing on the early people who help you build it and rewarding them for it, is you know, your employees also became millionaires and how many and of course your investors did well too, So there's just so much to celebrate in what you were all able to accomplish together. Right, you know. I mean the stock is one of the greatest inventions because you could have multiple owners of a company and you could grant stock to employees as an intive for them to work extra hard to build the company up and make it successful because they would have piece of the action or the equity, so that once the company goes public or gets acquired, then they will come into a nice fortune on their own.

44:19 So I know today you are an investor and you use your time in various different ways. I would be very interested to know about your take on where we are with the AI introduction from an investment advantage point. Right. So I've been following the AI technology for the last ten years since you know, Nvidia's chip is used for AI training models as well as you know open ai and Entropic and many other leading companies. Who's general develop developing this general of AI that is world changing? Yes, so I have I have invested in disruptive companies all through my career over the last thirty years, and I saw that n Videos is the latest disruptive company in AI.

45:21 So yeah, I think there would be many winners going forward. And I don't know exactly you know who, but you know, Anthropic is looking like it's becoming a leader now over open ai, and there are other companies that are that are coming up. So I think it's AI will continue to be very disruptive over the next five to ten years. And I think everybody should be learning as much about AI technology as they can for their job opportunities, or for their to make their work more productive, or for investments so that they could catch some of the upside that will be offered through this huge industry growth.

46:18 And then just briefly, do you think that you know, I remember when the when the Internet really was really heavy in the late nineteen nineties and such, and that was that was a huge game changer. Do you think that the Internet introduction is the similar kind of technological disruption as AI or do you think AI is a whole other level. So it kind of builds on the previous innovations. So first there was the industrial revolution with invention of steam engine. Then that was sort of the electric revolution with invention of electricity thanks to Tesla, And then there was intervention of computers and the personal computers and the Internet and the mobile and now the AI. I would say that AI is even bigger than Internet.

47:11 That's what I think too. Yeah, But like I said, it's sort of built on layers of innovations before. It's just that now we're talking about intelligence, which is pretty universal. Just like you know, electricity or or watts or wattage is important. Uh, the the the intelligence represented by what's called tokens is a very very important unit of intelligence that sees that that's just going to get generated more and more to the scale that's really unbelievable. And so I think that AI is definitely, maybe orders of magnitude bigger than Internet, and it will be very disruptive.

48:02 Right to completely agree. So let me give you a chance to close this conversation as you like, Michael, this shows lit by people around the world who are out to better themselves as humans, as leaders that want to learn more about how to create conscious organizations, conscious capitalist organizations. What would you like to leave them with? Yeah, so I would encourage the business leaders to embrace the adventures both at work and outside of their work. And you know, in my case, I found more meaning of my life through pursuing my adventures of motorcycle travel.

48:44 But it could be very different for other people. And so I would just encourage all the leaders out there to not be afraid to embrace the adventure and take some risks, because without risk, there isn't much reward. And so yeah, do that both in and outside of your work, and I think you will become a more effective leader. Michael. It has spent a complete joy and privilege to know you, to read your book and have you on to share with my listeners and viewers. Thank you for coming on working on purpose. Thank you so much. Listeners and viewers, You're going to want to learn more about Michael Yang, his book Coming Alive on the Ride, and his various pursuits in the world of work. You can find him by visiting Michael Yang dot com. So that's Michael y anng dot com. He also you can also find him on Facebook and LinkedIn various other places as well. Last week I give us the live show you can always catch it be recorded podcast. We were on the air with Beth Wanner, the founder and CEO of mother Cover and agency offering interim and fractional coverage for parental and other forms of leave. We talked about the problem of family planning and parental leave, the views and opportunity for both the employee and the company. Very very illuminated and exciting that what we can actually do here.

50:01 Next week we'll be on the air. We'll be on the air with Justin High talking about his new book Stress Nation, Escape the Technology Trap, Eliminate Stress and Reclaim Rest. He'll be sharing why people constantly feel tired, lonely, anxious, disconnected and and well, explaining in both humorous end pointing at pros how the technology that we're supposed to make our lives easier is actually one of the leading causes of chronic stress, just regular cortisol and dangerously inadequate sleep, and what we can do about it. So see you again, and let's continue to lean in and discover how to elevate your operating system as a leader and create destination workplaces where legendary business takes place. Let's work on Purpose.

50:42 We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune into Working on Purpose featuring your host, doctor Elise Cortes, each week on W four C. Why Together we'll create a world where business operates conscientiously, leadership inspires and passion performance, and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning and purpose they crave. See you there, Let's work on Purpose. H